


Labels That Define Us

by AngeNoir



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Identity Porn, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 20:05:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7188182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark was born a satyr, and sometimes he really wishes he'd just been born a human. No one takes a satyr seriously, but when he tries to gain some credibility and authority, he faces obstacles put in his way from his board, his father figure, and the very fae people who would know what it would be like to be different from everyone else.</p><p>Tony's having quite a few bad months. Thank god there's a wolf in Central Park that likes to listen. Whenever it bothers to show up, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Labels That Define Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelinoshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelinoshi/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Cap/Iron Man Reverse Big Bang Art - angelinoshi](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/206582) by angelinoshi. 



> My poor, poor artist [angelinoshi](http://angelinoshi.tumblr.com/) was ready on time - on time being a week and a day ago, on the 5th - and I am the late one. Consistently. x.x;; I'm so sorry; I really hope I do this beautiful art justice.
> 
> Visit the art [here](http://angelinoshi.tumblr.com/post/145498431750/whelp-this-is-my-entry-for-the-capiron-man-2016)!
> 
>  
> 
> also I'm very sorry if this doesn't work well angel; you've been so beautiful and patient and my entire fear all this time is that my fic just doesn't measure up.
> 
>  
> 
> And as a comment rightly pointed out, I forgot to write Rhodey's part in my race to get this done! :( I may end up writing a small addendum or epilogue. I'm so sorry x.x

**BEFORE**

 

It wasn’t a wolf.

It couldn’t be, really – what section of animal control would really go ‘yeah, let’s let a wolf run around in Central Park?’ – but it certainly looked like a wolf.

Maybe with was just a really big dog.

Yeah, that’s what Tony was going to go with. A big dog.

“Hey there, buddy,” Tony muttered, chin propped up on his knees and the tiny nub of his right horn digging a bit into his arm. The air was still pretty chilly this late in February, and there was still snow on the ground and it was after dark – surely that could explain the goosebumps raised on his bare arms.

Not the huge wolf that was currently standing in front of him. Nope, no siree.

The wolf let out a huff of air and approached, but Tony was currently too drunk to really care. Maybe if the wolf ate him he wouldn’t have to listen to Pepper berate him for the merger that fell through tonight, or deal with Rhodey’s disappointed looks when he found out Tony walked home drunk through Central Park. Central Park was all well and good in the daylight, but past two in the morning?

Well, apparently, past two in the morning, you got a giant, hulking wolf staring you down.

“Do you have a larger pack?” Tony asked, suddenly curious. “It seems unlikely you’d be living on your own here. Wolves need packs, after all. But if you _had_ a pack it’s very likely you would have already been reported to the authorities. So maybe you’re a ghost wolf or something.”

Tony paused, and then frowned. “It’d be just my luck if you’re another one of the fae-folk. Are you? You probably are, if you’re a white wolf in the middle of New York City.”

The wolf sneezed and sat back on his hind legs.

For a few moments longer, Tony stared at him, and then with a soft sigh, buried his head in his arms again. “Either eat me or go away,” he muttered.

The wind blew again, and Tony curled tighter against himself, wishing he’d thought to wear human clothes. Of course, the night on the town wasn’t supposed to end like this, and was supposed to be something less humiliating, but—

There was a soft woof, and then a cold nose poking at his elbow.

“Cut it out,” he muttered. “Go find something interesting to eat. I’m all skin and bones.”

Another woof, and then hot panting against the side of Tony’s neck.

Tony ignored it for all of thirty seconds before lifting his head indignantly. “What do you think you’re—”

The wolf licked over his face, from chin to hairline.

“ _EEyuckh_!” Tony shrieked, jerking away and scrubbing at his face with one hand. “What the _hell_?”

He could swear the wolf was laughing at him as it took two steps back, tail wagging slightly from side to side.

For a moment, Tony teetered between helpless amusement and towering fury. His shit night would have been perfect if he could have just sat here, underneath a tree off the side of the road Tony used to walk home, and sulk.

Finally, he let out a resigned sigh and stood up, loincloth flapping a little in the wind, and dragged a hand through his hair. “Alright. I suppose I can go feel sorry for myself in my apartment instead of what I guess must be your spot or something. Sorry to bother you, wolf.” With that, he continued walking east down 79th. After a few minutes, though, he stopped and put his hands on his hips.

The wolf, which had been keeping an easy pace at his side, also stopped, panting lightly.

“Shoo. I am quite capable of getting home by myself, no matter how drunk I look. Satyr, remember? We hold our liquor well.”

The wolf sneezed.

“Right.” Tony eyed him a little and sighed. The buzz he’d had while drinking with the humans – who were supposed to finalize the merger with Stark Industries tomorrow morning, but now probably wouldn’t – had faded by now. It was dark and cold and Tony was probably lucky he hadn’t encountered a mugger at some point through all this. If the wolf wanted to walk with him, who was Tony to tell the wolf not to? Grumbling under his breath about the impossibilities of tonight, he turned back in his direction and made his way down 79th.

Once he reached 5th Ave., though, the wolf stopped, and whined a little.

“I knew it,” Tony sighed. “One of the fae-folk. You’re bound to the park, aren’t you? A nature spirit of some kind? I should probably be able to speak to you if I was a half-decent satyr. Nature spirit, my ass.” He kicked a stray soda can, his hoof clattering against the ground, and tried not to feel upset. He hadn’t really expected the wolf to walk with him all the way down to 1st Ave. with him. If the wolf had, what was Tony supposed to do? Take the wolf with him into his apartment building? No, it was better that the wolf was some kind of spirit that was tied to the forest.

“The least you could do is tell me your name,” he finally said. “I figure it’s only fair. You know more about me than I do you right now.”

The wolf sat down and whined again.

“Gods laugh,” he grunted. “Fine then. See if I ever come around looking for you. Probably having a good laugh at my expense anyway.”

Turning on his heel, he resolutely kept walking, ignoring the other pedestrians that were out at this time of night. It wasn’t the full moon, but he saw quite a few lycanthropes, a few sirens, or maybe they were lamia (who could really tell the difference between the two races without speaking to them, and Tony had had quite enough of humanoid interactions tonight, thank you), and even a dracanae moving down the street. And then there were your humans, tourists mostly, some drunk and some not, openly gawking at the nonhumans among them. Fae-folk were known, of course – hard to hide in today’s day and age of technology – but most still hid, or made cities and towns separate from human cities and towns. New York City had the highest concentration of fae-folk in all of North America. People would wander on the east side of Central Park, taking intrusive pictures and staring.

Of course, people stared at Tony since he could remember for different reasons, too, but still, he’d always hated the staring.

The walk from Central Park to his apartment building was only fifteen minutes more – all told, his apartment was about a thirty- to forty-minute walk from the high-end restaurant he was supposed to be finalizing the merger – and in no time at all he was walking through the door, nodding at the doorman and swiping his card at the elevator.

“Good evening, Mr. Stark. I sent Mr. Rhodes on up, sir!” the doorman called to him as Tony stepped into the elevator.

Tony winced. Rhodey was supposed to be in D.C., still, and him coming home early meant either Obie sent Rhodey to push Tony forward or Pepper called Rhodey to come because Tony was giving her problems and she wanted Rhodey to corral him into more appropriate behavior. Either way, Rhodey rarely visited early for anything other than trying to fix Tony, at least not anymore, and honestly…

Tony was tired. He just wanted to go home and sleep.

As the elevator doors closed, Tony leaned against the back of the elevator and stared blankly at his reflection in the mirrored elevator walls. The cold had stiffened his nipples, the brisk wind had brought color to his dusky skin and made him look breathless.

He hated it. He hated the confining feeling of human clothes, catching on his pelt and pulling at his shoulders, because human clothing was never made with the fae-folk in mind. Still, he much preferred the human clothing to the almost lecherous looks he got on the street. Satyrs had reputations, Hollywood had stereotypes, and Tony hadn’t ever fit either one his entire life. It was bad enough when tourists on the streets – drunk tourists, even, never the sober ones, not directly – asked whether he was looking for a partner that night, because they wanted to ‘experience’ a satyr. When he had gone to tonight’s business dinner, he hadn’t thought much of the request to dress ‘casual.’ He had thought the merger was in the bag, Aircorp Communications already certain that Stark Industries’ R&D would propel them forward, increase their profit margin, all that talk that Tony could speak with the best of them but deeply hated it.

Being propositioned, over and over, to the point where he had to physically shove his chair away from the CEO’s right-hand man? Yeah. Tony had fucked up the merger, and Obie would come yell at him tomorrow for it, Pepper would give him a disappointed look and try not to sigh too heavily, and Rhodey would try and tell him to be patient, that assholes only got worse the more you acknowledged the behavior.

The elevators gave a soft ding.

Tony stepped out of the elevator and walked up to his door, keying in the code and opening the door.

The apartment’s living room was a conglomeration of living plants in pots around the edges of the room, small trees and tall ferns and bright lilies of all colors, and metal bits and machinery strewn about. DUM-E squeaked and whirred, rolling through the mess to bob his arm up and down in Tony’s face.

“Not right now, DUM-E,” Tony sighed. “Where’s Rhodey?”

There was a clank from the kitchen, and Tony glanced to his left. The living room was really more of his work area; when guests were over (well, to be completely accurate, when Pepper and Rhodey were over), he brought them to the kitchen and the dining room. He wasn’t that great of a cook, but he wasn’t bad, either, and they could sit around the dinner table and talk.

Well. They could when they came over just to do that. Normally he didn’t see them unless something was fucking up somewhere.

He was so tired.

He walked through the arched doorway to the kitchen. Rhodey was in a tank top and jeans, bent over the stove. The scent was thick and rich, and Tony felt his stomach complain a little.

Taking in a deep breath, Tony plastered a smile on and strode into the kitchen fully. “Honeybun, pudding-pop, sweetie-pie, what _are_ you doing home so early?”

Rhodey whirled around in surprise and clutched at his heart, his eyes bleeding from red down to the normal brown they usually were. “Zeus’s balls, man, don’t scare me like that,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m making a nice mushroom stew.”

“Aw, for me? You shouldn’t have,” Tony said breezily, coming over and hopping up on the countertop to swing his hooved feet back and forth. “Really, what brings on this sudden concern to fatten me up? I didn’t leave a breadcrumb trail for people to save me, you know.”

Rhodey paused in his motions, and he narrowed his eyes at Tony. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Tony blinked in surprise. “Wrong?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re upset. What’s wrong?” Rhodey said, turning the heat down on the – very nice-smelling, now that Tony was even closer to it – soup and facing Tony square-on. “Pepper said you’d be back later than this. Honestly, the only reason I’m making this is because I assumed the business dinner would have very few satyr-acceptable options, and all of those pitifully tiny. Those salads are a disgrace.”

Tony shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing’s wrong unless you want it to be wrong, buddy-ol-pal-of-mine. But you are here early. What brings you to New York a good five days ahead of schedule? I thought you were talking up a storm with all the bigwigs in D.C. about the new Jericho missile.”

Rhodey shrugged, folding his arms. “We talked. It was really impressive. There wasn’t much to say after showing the numbers and the test footage. C’mon, Tony. What gives? It’s so late; most business dinners are over long before now.”

“Can we just leave it for tomorrow, Rhodey?” Tony sighed, pushing off of the countertop. “You made a nice soup here.”

Slowly, Rhodey shook his head, the pointed tips of his ears with their piercings glinting in the bright fluorescent lights. “You know better than that, Tony. If there’s a problem, we need to fix things as soon as we possibly can. We can’t just leave them—”

“It’s not going to get better, Rhodey, there’s nothing you can fix, and honestly there’s no way in hell, heaven, or the greenlands that you could possibly know about tonight, which means you’re here to talk about something _else_ I’ve done, and frankly, pumpkin, I am not going to deal with it right now. Alright?”

The silence was ringing, and it wasn’t until he was done speaking that Tony realized he had raised his voice, practically yelling, his heartbeat thundering in his ears and his chest heaving. Rhodey was looking at him with confusion and Tony threw his hands up in the air. “You know what?” he said. “I’m not hungry. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Rhodes.”

“No – Tony, wait a minute—” Rhodey began, but Tony was pushing past Rhodey to the two bedrooms – one of which was mainly an office, but also had a couch for Rhodey to crash on when he was in town. The other bedroom was Tony’s, and he shoved open the door and closed it behind him with his hoof.

The room was a mess – he’d rushed out the door this morning, determined not to be late to R&D again and give Obie another reason to yell at him. The bed was nothing more than a mattress and box spring on the ground, wide and spacious, but Tony preferred it that way. Here, computer screens blinked and ran numerous programs, giving the area a soft glow. He had put a lot of hanging plants, too, that drooped down and brushed the top of his head, even with how short he was; he moved over to the small bathroom and filled his spray bottle. His notebooks were stuffed into the bookcase, filling it to overflowing, and the closet had two or three custom-tailored suits, some more generic shirts and shorts that he could use with more or less ease, considering they weren’t exactly satyr-friendly, and one or two tunics he would wear when he could get away with it.

He needed to do laundry, he needed to write down this idea that had been bugging him all day, and he needed to sleep somehow.

His stomach growled.

…And he needed food, but he’d eat breakfast tomorrow, he supposed.

With a sigh, he began circling the room, watering the plants as he did, when there was a knock on his door. He ignored it, which prompted another knock, and then the door slowly opened. Rhodey stood there, two steaming bowls balanced in his hands.

“Look, man. You obviously had a really rough day today, and I thought I could surprise you by coming early, make something for you to eat, since our lives are so busy… I barely get to see you anymore. I just wanted two days to chill with you before SI has me present a new product or concept to the Pentagon, or before the Air Force decides to pull me back to do training exercises or some shit with the recruits,” Rhodey said quietly.

Tony stared at Rhodey a long moment before letting out a huge sigh and setting the spray bottle down. “C’mere,” he said, moving over to the bed and sitting down on it. “Let’s eat together, yeah? You can tell me how the missile went over with those bloodthirsty thugs. I oversaw it personally, made sure all the bugs were out of the tracking system, made sure—”

“They loved it, Tony, of course they did!” Rhodey laughed a little, sitting down as well. His eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light, glowing faintly red as he stirred his bowl of soup. “It was pretty badass, man. You did a good job on it.”

“Yeah, well… maybe Obie will finally give me a little leeway, you know? I feel like I’m reinventing the wheel over and over again, with every new missile design…” Tony shrugged apathetically. “Maybe I should get out of R&D.”

Rhodey frowned. “But you like R&D. You called the rest of SI a bunch of extraneous assholes that constantly blow hot air and spew shit like there’s no tomorrow.”

Tony took a spoonful of soup. He just knew that it was the board blocking his requests from coming to fruition, and it was _his_ company, after all. He had to placate them, but he also knew what he wanted to be in the works. Maybe if he was right in their faces, it’d be harder for them to block his initiatives…

“Tony. You okay?”

Tony blinked up at Rhodey’s concerned face. “I’m just tired, sugarlips, that’s all. I’ll be right as rain in the morning.”

Rhodey gnawed on his lip a bit. “You know, you could take a day off. Walk the streets with me. Catch a break.”

The idea sounded perfect, and Tony was ready to agree when he remembered the business dinner tonight, and he grimaced. “I probably fucked over our merger with Aircorp.”

“What?” Rhodey said in surprise. “How? I thought that was a done deal?”

“That slime Garvin kept making passes at me at the restaurant. I ended up dumping my wine over his head and kicking him in the balls,” Tony sighed.

Rhodey opened his mouth and then closed it. Tony nodded knowingly. “See? Even you can’t defend my actions.”

“Tony – you have _hooves_.”

“I only kicked him a _little_ bit. And that fucker deserved it.” Tony tilted his face down, studying the soup in his hands so that he didn’t see the disappointment or resignation on Rhodey’s face.

There was a sigh from Rhodey, and then his hand reached out and covered Tony’s, a thumb brushing back and forth over the back of Tony’s head. “That sucks, man.”

The unexpected kindness made tears prickle at the corners of Tony’s eyes, but he cleared his throat and shook his head. “Hey, no big deal, yeah? I’ll just get yelled at by Obie tomorrow, Pepper will have to do damage control, I’ll have to make a bigger and better bomb that you’ll need to peddle to the CIA so our stock stays up after this fiasco.”

Rhodey cursed under his breath and placed his soup on the night table before wrapping an arm around Tony’s shoulders. “It’s been a rough few years.”

“Speak for yourself,” Tony muttered, but he didn’t say it very loudly, starved as he was for someone to hug him. He was extremely tactile by nature – which is why it killed him to have satyr stereotypes hanging over his head. If he so much as hugged a coworker or acquaintance, they assumed he was trying to sleep with them. Either they took that as permission to get handsy in the not-good way, or they became stilted and awkward around him. Rhodey and Pepper and Happy were the true friends, the ones who let him sprawl over their lap or nuzzle into their bellies, loop arms around their waist or flop dramatically on their shoulders. They never treated him differently because of it.

Heaving a sigh, Rhodey stroked over Tony’s ears briefly before pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Things will get better. You’ve reached majority now, and you have some amazing ideas for clean energy and robotics. The board will _have_ to listen to you.”

For a few minutes, Tony played with the seam of the comforter, debating telling Rhodey anything – because Rhodey might be his best friend, but Rhodey was also practical and blunt. If he didn’t think something would work, he not only would tell Tony that, but tell Pepper what Tony intended to do, leading to a Pepper dogging Tony’s shadow to make sure he _didn’t_ do whatever it was. Still, he wanted Rhodey’s opinion.

So he murmured, “I’m thinking of crashing a board meeting.”

Rhodey shifted, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I still get notifications and shit about board meetings, about what’s on the agenda. I still own the majority of the stock, I just keep away because people don’t like fae-folk.” Tony rolled one shoulder, saying it for as much as his own benefit as for Rhodey. “I really do have the right to be there on all the shareholder meetings anyway. If I get in there, I can pitch the prosthetics Bruce and I finally perfected… and maybe if they go for that, we can get them on our side with the reactor. It’s hard to say no to someone standing right in front of you, especially since I hold a good chunk of the shares of the company.”

“I know, Tony, but I thought you agreed to let Obie handle the business side of it. You hated it anyway.” Rhodey let out a long sigh and rubbed his cheek on the top of Tony’s head.

After a few more silent moments, Tony clutched tight around his bowl and cleared his throat. “So… you think I shouldn’t,” he ventured.

Still more silence, and Tony fought to keep as still as possible. He didn’t really want to hear Rhodey disagree again, tell him to wait, tell him to be patient and keep his head down. His inventions could help so many people—

“I can’t think of anything wrong with that plan. It is _your_ name on the company, you need something to improve SI’s PR standing anyway, and from what you’ve said, you’ve moved the prosthetics to being more market soluble anyway, right?”

Tony inhaled in surprise. “What?” he croaked out.

Rhodey let out a small sigh. “Maybe Pepper and I have been too cautious with you. You’re our friend, and we don’t like seeing you hurt. But pushing you to hide away isn’t helping you. Well, it is helping you, but not _you-_ you, if you know what I mean.”

Tony pulled back – a little reluctantly, but still, pulled back – to stare at Rhodey. “Who are you, and what have you done with my responsible, frowning Rhode-ster?”

With a laugh, Rhodey – gently – elbowed Tony in the side. “Eat your stew, Tones. You and I were never responsible.”

“You joined the _Air Force_ ,” Tony muttered, but he was biting down a laugh. He and Rhodes had terrorized the MIT campus with their constant competitions of crazier engineering ideas, and Rhodey would still revert to that when they were tipsy and relaxing. Still, it was pretty rare and new that in his serious persona, coming as an ambassador from the Air Force to check on military contracts, that he accepted and encouraged Tony’s ideas that were something other than new weapons designs. “You really think this is good?”

“Yeah, Tones. I think this is something that could really get off the ground.” Rhodey picked up his bowl and took a spoonful. “And, honestly, Pepper and I – we want what’s best for you. We want you to be happy. And you love making the world better. You’re always thinking ahead. So if you’re – if you’re invested in this, and you want it, go for it, you know?” He swallowed his bite and smiled, a little ruefully. “So is that a no for taking a day off from work?”

Tony grinned, the smile light and easy on his face. “How about the day after tomorrow, sugarbuns?”

 

**DAY OF PITCH**

***

“You blew the merger.”

“Don’t give me that shit, Obie, you know I didn’t. Aircorp needs us too much for this. They’re not going to dump us because I kicked a pervert in the nuts,” Tony said tersely, ignoring the pulling of the cloth against his fur easily. “I just want to propose the idea to the board. That’s all. I know they’re a bunch of bigots, but even they have to admit if I’ve got a good idea that will improve their stock. It worked with the Jericho, didn’t it?”

Obie strode along, his long legs forcing Tony to pretty much trot in order to keep up with him. “Some points on the Aircorp contract have changed this morning.”

“Aircorp can’t do fuck since the lawyers already okayed it yesterday. If they try to change any points on the contract, they’d have to sit through another round of talks that will take them at least two weeks to hammer out the new points, _and_ explain why they’re changing them, _while_ they’re hemorrhaging money because their business plan is nonexistent. They’re not going to do that unless you _let them_ , and Obie, you and I both know you’re not going to let them do that.”

Obie stopped so suddenly Tony nearly skidded, hooves slipping on the slick tile. The taller man stared down at Tony, that odd, half-smile half-lidded look on his face he had always gotten when Tony had made a particularly devastating product. “I guess you’re right. And you want to present something to the board today, after Aircorp execs have been on the phone chewing their ears off because of you?”

Tony folded his arms and arched his eyebrow. “After the latest fiasco that was the missing shipment of weapons, and our tracking devices being subverted? Hell yes I think they’ll listen. You just got to give me time to pull it off.”

“You’re a satyr, Tony. No matter your dvergr blood, your sylph blood, you came out a satyr and they’re not going to view you seriously,” Obie said.

And see, it was small little digs like that that dug into Tony’s skin, burrowed deep. Sure, he’d heard that often enough as a child, and you’d think that the insult would lose its bite over time, but… “That’s my problem, then.”

Obie grunted and began walking again, but at least he wasn’t taking long strides, which made it easier for Tony’s hooves to keep up with his pace, clopping quietly as they made their way through busy cubicles.

“You get five minutes to sell the product, and then you’ll leave the room so the board can deliberate. You’ll get your answer tomorrow. I’ll push for them to make a decision as quickly as they can. How’s that?” Obie said finally, stopping in front of his office.

Tony spread his arms wide. “Trust me, I’ll have them eating out of my hands in no time.” At Obie’s skeptical eyebrow, Tony grinned. “I’ve been planning this for a long time. It’s finally cost-efficient, and with more resources dedicated to that branch of R&D, it could become a best-seller, in multiple markets. The possibilities are endless. You’ll see.”

Obie let out a little laugh and stepped into the office, closing the door behind him. Tony took a moment to let a smile spread across his face before nearly skipping over to the conference room the board normally met in.

He’d had it all planned out for more than two weeks now – ever since he and Bruce had managed to finesse the circuitry and find a viable mesh that would integrate with the nerves. They’d even brought the cost down to something that wasn’t too far above the price point of the high-quality prosthetics in the field currently. Not only could the pieces be quickly built at a mostly cost-efficient margin, but there were places for customization, ways to improve it, ways to market it to the general public. It wouldn’t make a _lot_ of money, but it would be a solid line of incoming money that would bolster their shaky standing with the public as well as lend weight to Tony’s other ideas. He just needed to get this project past the board, establish himself as a fighting force that could dictate some of the direction the company took.

He could almost envision it.

Board meetings normally took place around ten in the morning and lasted until noon, though sometimes they stayed later or earlier, depending. It was the first board meeting in a _long_ while that Tony had attended – he’d attended quite a few when he’d first inherited the company, but when Obie had taken him aside and asked him not to sit too closely to five out of the nine board members because they were “uncomfortable” with him, he’d decided he didn’t need to sit through the boring meetings in order to get shit accomplished, not when he’d gotten enough discrimination at MIT, thank you. He didn’t need it from his own board.

That was about the time that he told Pepper that he wanted her to take his place on the board, sit in while he couldn’t. For the most part, she did – she was accepted as his personal assistant, and everyone knew she handled the management side of things and he handled the inventing side of things. The problem, of course, was that she was both female and young; the board treated her dismissively, and the amount of times she’d come to him, frustrated and even screaming with rage, he’d wished he could go up there and kick a few other people in the nuts.

He’d been delegating a lot to her, he knew, and also knew it was that delegation that made her skeptical of almost everything he proposed. Rhodey was the same way – he wasn’t a traditional vampire, but he still needed to fight against all those vampire myths and it handicapped the amount of work he could do in the Air Force without being blocked by the higher ups. By all rights he should have been lieutenant colonel, even a colonel, but instead he was a major in the Air Force. If it wasn’t for Tony’s insistence that they use Rhodey – and only Rhodey – as their military liaison to the _entire_ United States military, he privately doubted they’d ever let Rhodey promote to captain. Fae-folk, particularly the “dark” fae-folk, were routinely ignored in most, if not all, employment – and when they were employed, they rarely moved up. He was extremely cautious against all of Tony’s crazier ideas nowadays, MIT far behind them and the reality of what people thought of Rhodey stark and cruel in the light of day. His support in this meant… a lot. Tony was by nature optimistic, but the continuous drudgery of everything Obie threw at him, of R &D, of having his projects consistently turned down… He was seriously considering doing something else with his life.

The junior board members came in first, of course – the more senior, more powerful ones would be the last to show – and the first two gave Tony side looks, but the third one ignored Tony entirely, looking harried and tired. The fourth one sat down next to Tony, giving him an absent smile.

There were about seven present when Obie entered – the head, and therefore the most important (and last one) to enter. He barely spared Tony a glance; he gave a short nod to Mr. Stacks before calling the meeting to order. Quorum was established, and they began addressing the different issues regarding the financial problems that the company was facing. It wasn’t like Tony had been unaware of how much money they were hemorrhaging from all the stolen shipments and the patent battles fought out in court, but Tony had definitely thought the board of directors could manage the money better than they had. He frowned, doing quick calculations in his head. If Obie had just _told_ him they were this bad off, he could have figured out a plan, or something. There was no excuse for these types of trouble, not when there were—

Huh. Tony turned to look out the window, brow furrowed. His designs were consistently turned down, and they ranged from streamlining networks to better, longer-lasting smartphones. All of those were markets that SI hadn’t broken into yet, and could make such a huge impact if they _did_ , and it was an untapped market. Certainly it wasn’t like those fields were oversaturated with products – why would his designs be turned down so often? Was it because the ideas came from a satyr?

Gods above, he was going to have words with Obie. He had trusted Obie to handle this side of the business, but if this side was going to shit—

“Tony?”

Tony turned to look at Obie – and realized all the board was staring at him. He’d been tapping his pen against the pad of paper, a bunch of shorthand notes scribbled across the once-pristine surface, and he looked down at it before looking back up. “Yeah?”

“Your thoughts on this?”

Tony cast his mind back over the discussion that had happened around him. “I think it’s not going to work.”

Obie’s brows slammed down, and Tony fought not to flinch at the look of disapproval on Obie’s face. In the silence, Tony found himself chattering to fill it.

“You want another improvement on a boring, staid design. It’s not going to rake in the money this company obviously needs to steady the shakiness that’s apparent even to me – and I’ve only been in this one meeting. Redesigning the Jericho or the Yellowjacket isn’t going to give you the financial independence this company needs to get to the front of the field the way it needs to.”

After another few seconds of silence, one of the board members – Johnson, Tony thought, though he didn’t really know – asked, “So, Anthony, what would you suggest to do to reach financial independence?”

“Honestly?” Tony said, glancing at Obie, but Obie was silent, staring at him in a disquieting way. When nothing came from that corner, Tony turned to face Johnson. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve been pumping out missile after missile, targeting system and body armor after the next, and we never seem to get to a point where we have some breathing room. From the reports I get, we barely hit our quarterly goal each time. So let’s look in a new direction. My specialty in MIT was robotics, after all. We’re already aligned with the military. How many vets are out there missing limbs from our own weapons? My proposal for a line of medical prosthesis is not only financially viable, but functionally they’re miles ahead of what’s already on the market. Doctors will be recommending them like crazy, and it’ll shine up SI’s media face at the same time. It’s cost-efficient and there’s no real reason not to go in this direction beyond the fact that we never have before.”

“That’s still a good, solid reason,” Speiling rumbled. “We have no leg to stand on in these industries. We’re not well-known there.”

Tony shook his head. “No, you know that the Stark name is big enough that people will give it a chance. As long as we demonstrate viability—”

“We’re known as military contractors, not builders of medical equipment,” MacCallum argued. “Our name is known on the sides of bombs, not prosthetics.”

“But we can _change_ that. Our products are known throughout the military community. If we begin there – through military hospitals, through military medical plans, and expand outwards—” Tony began.

Obie stood up, dragging all the attention in the room to him. “It’s too risky of an endeavor, to put money into it. I’m afraid the answer needs to be—”

“Now wait a minute, Stane,” Adams began, leaning forward. “Whether or not it’s risky isn’t in question, but some risks are worth the rewards. He mentioned a showing – well, he needs to prove the military is interested. Can you put together an exhibition? A showing?”

“Where?” Obie asked, and he sounded – upset, in some way. Tony shot him a confused look as Obie continued, “If we allow SI space for this exhibition, we’re pretty much putting our stamp of approval on it.”

Tony’s mind raced forward, and he stood up, mirroring Obie’s position. “What if SI supports an exhibition somewhere neutral? Some stadium, something, where raw talent can show their projects? And then let our R&D put up the prosthetics. We’ll be able to see the response to it, be able to judge how receptive the military will be with this technology. Hell, we’ll be able to see if this is a path we can take without getting too invested, how’s that?”

The board members looked at one another.

“It’s still incredibly risky—” Johnson began.

“We’re not looking for sure things,” Adams interrupted. “If we were, we’d be coasting along underneath Hammertech. SI is the face of the new, and this is a good direction to take. I think the idea has merit.”

Baker tapped on the table with his notebook. “Gentlemen, an exhibition would be a good venue, but the point remains that we have not the budget for a new line or new direction.”

Tony cleared his throat, and the entire board turned to look at him.

“As the one who has his name on the actual company, I feel this is an important direction to take. That being said, I defer to the people who have had many, many more years guiding this business. How about I talk to – to the people at Central Park? We’ll make it a huge PR event. We’ll recoup publicity points, we’ll come off supporting the small guys, we’ll be able to scout talent and pick up a bunch of good ideas, and it’ll give us the ability to test out the market. And we won’t even need to use SI funds. I’ll look it up, be the one to book it, I’ll be wholly in charge. My big break, yeah?”

Almost to a one, the board members looked at one another, obviously highly skeptical. “It’s a big responsibility, Tony,” Obie finally said. “And, well – the Aircorp thing hasn’t reflected well on you. And the media loves to pick you apart—”

Tony braced his fists on the table, leaned forward, lowering his head unconsciously to flash his horns. “I have the money to do this, and we need the PR boost. What I am should have no bearing on my ability to pull off a public event, unless you plan to make me do it entirely on my own? I’m sure we have procedures somewhere in place to handle things like this. Think of it as a glorified science fair, only as another way to show off to the military what we can do. Are you really going to fight me on this when it will cost you literally nothing to let me try?”

“If you fail—” Obie began.

“If I fail,” Tony cut in sharply, “you’ll get the satisfaction of saying ‘I told you so’ and dismissing my idea out of hand. Unless, of course, you want it to succeed and you help.”

There was a pause, and Tony looked at the different board members refusing to meet his gaze. A heartbeat later, Obie shook his head.

“I think you’ll find it more complicated than you expected, but you deserve the chance to try, my boy,” Obie declared.

Tony wasn’t sure that was exactly a ringing endorsement, but he’d take it.

***

“You again.”

The wolf wagged its tail, but did nothing else besides pad softly beside Tony as Tony made his way home.

With a sigh, Tony shook his head. “I don’t even know what to say. I don’t get why Obie wasn’t supportive, and I don’t get why the board wasn’t happy with the projected numbers. We hammered everything out…”

He trailed off, the soft clop of his hooves making a counterpoint to his wheeling thoughts. The board had dragged his idea through the wringer, had done their level best to poke as many holes in it as possible, and thankfully Bruce was able to keep his head, and Tony was able to keep his smile on his face, but still…

Tony was tired.

A muted huff of air dragged his eyes back to the white wolf. “What would you know?” Tony grunted, shoving his hands into his pockets and hunching his shoulders. “I just want to get home and sleep.”

He’d reached the edge of Central Park, and the wolf once again stopped at the edge of the grass.

“Well, I guess it’s nice to know you’re not a drunken hallucination,” Tony sighed. “I don’t know why you’re following _me_ , but I don’t need an escort, okay? I’ve been walking home from work since I was eighteen.”

The wolf let out another huff.

“Right,” Tony sighed, and turned towards home.

 

**T-MINUS 7 MONTHS TO SHOWCASE**

***

“I don’t get why this is so _complicated_!” Tony growled under his breath. “It’s just asking for permission to use SI’s logo. I’m a board member! I shouldn’t have to beg for this!”

A sympathetic whine from the wolf punctuated his words, and Tony threw his hands up dramatically. “ _Thank_ you! See?!”

***

Tony paused at the edge of Central Park, reluctant to head towards his apartment. He’d walked the entire width of Central Park, one side to the other, and normally the wolf walked with him. There hadn’t been a single time since that first night he’d been drunk where he hadn’t seen the white wolf at least once, even just through the brush.

But he didn’t see the wolf once the entire walk this time. And he was worried.

From somewhere off in the distance, a wolf howled.

His wolf?

No, that was ridiculous. The wolf wasn’t _his_.

 

**T-MINUS ~~5~~ 8 MONTHS TO SHOWCASE**

***

“So you’re not going to believe this. I finally get SI to agree and there’s _another_ obstacle? Central Park has tons of people in it daily! Why would it be so difficult to get _our_ people in it for one afternoon?”

The wolf let out a confused whine.

“Even you think it’s strange!” Tony said triumphantly, long-used to ignoring the weird looks he got from other pedestrians this time of night. For some reason, the wolf stayed hidden in other people’s presences, so Tony just talked at the bushes and listened to the soft movement of paws through the underbrush and lupine whines and yips that served as the other half of the conversation he carried out. Today, he’d been waiting for this walk eagerly, because he was so indignant about it.

“Central Park is not just telling me it’s impossible for me to hold this event this year, but that I have to refile my paperwork. _All of it_. Apparently I did it all wrong at the beginning, and I’ve got to do it again!”

A huff of air.

“I’m just so _tired_. I feel like there’s a reason everything’s falling through, don’t you think? It’s making me start to doubt my ability to control my own fate.” He sighed, and stopped walking, folding his arms and trying not to notice as the pants pulled his fur the wrong way. “I still have to get these other designs put out for the board. Pepper’s been really busy with a lot of mismanagement – she’s so great at management, you know? But everyone apparently needs her to teach them how to do things better because they all suck. Which – really? Can’t we hire more competent people?”

There was a sniff from the bushes, and then the wolf’s head poked out. The huge wolf slowly came into view, and Tony stared almost in shock at the full sight of the wolf. Since that first day, the wolf had stayed more or less entirely hidden or even absent. This was the second time—

The wolf gently licked his hand.

“Yeah.” Tony sucked in a deep breath and blew out it a long exhale. “Okay. I’m going to get this done, and nothing’s going to stop me.”

 

**T-MINUS 6 MONTHS TO SHOWCASE**

***

“What do you mean, there’s a committee?” Tony asked, shifting his cell from his left ear to his right as he juggled the binders in his arms.

In his ear, Pepper let out a softly exasperated sigh. “I _mean_ ,” she huffed, “that Central Park has openings, and we’ve managed to secure a date ten months from now, but Central Park is also the center of most fae-folk gatherings and dwellings, and you know how the fae-folk feel about SI.”

Tony bit back a groan as he moved through the R&D department, heading towards his small corner office that was located off of his lab. He didn’t need to hear about _another_ set-back – it had taken him nearly two months to fill out the requisite paperwork, collaborate with SI’s publicity department so that they knew when to start advertising and asking for submitted inventions, and to liquefy enough of his funds and assets so that he could actually rent out Central Park for the specific day. He’d thought that once they had a date set, he just needed to wait for it to happen.

“What does this committee want?”

“Well, Central Park wasn’t very clear on that, but they certainly don’t want to upset their current inhabitants of their greenery, and regardless of the fact that the land is owned and controlled by the local government, the committee’s words will carry a lot of weight. You’ll need to make nice with them, talk it out, explain the benefits of all this—”

“Pepper, beauteous Pep, it’s not going to bother them at all. We’re going to have one stage, the surrounding field and area, and yeah foot traffic will be intense and a lot of places will be making money off of selling parking spaces, but that’s it. The proposal already explained the clean-up, that there would be no poisonous beverages around, even that we’d provide minimal security and blocks to make sure that attendees don’t wander off into the wild parts where the fae-folk live. What more could they want?” he demanded, kicking his office door closed behind him and dumping the tottering stack of binders onto the already messy desk. He bent down to pick up the small water bottle, and began misting the four plants he kept in his office.

Another sigh, and Tony could imagine Pepper shaking her head in frustration. “Succinctly? They don’t want the park affiliated with you. They’re not happy with the Merchant of Death hanging around their home.”

He couldn’t keep the small, bitter bark of laughter out of his voice. “Well, at least they’re not pissed I’m a satyr, right?” he said scathingly. “Right, well, when does this committee meet? And what is our plan of attack here?”

“It meets this weekend, Saturday morning at eight in the morning, in the Loeb Boathouse. I _highly_ recommend coming there early. There is no such thing as fashionably late at this. I know you can do that.” Her voice grew soft, and she murmured, “Do you want me to come with you? I’d have to shift a lot of things around, but I could manage it—”

“I should be able to handle a few hippies who hate the war effort,” Tony said dismissively, ignoring the fact that he desperately wanted her there. “Now, what’s our plan of attack? I mean, I know what I _want_ to say, but—”

Pepper cut in quickly. “No, no, what we’re going for is playing up the science-fair-esque aspect of it, the carnival. That it’s intended to show off scientific advancements, because SI is looking for a new direction other than military contracts. Stress that it’s an open forum, anyone can apply to have their technology featured if they meet the requirements. It’s there for the betterment of the world. I know you can sell things to people – I literally walked into your selling the board members on your smart-tech chip. You might be out of practice, but you know how.”

Tony grunted. He hated doing it, but he was pretty good at it. He could remember the many dinners where he was trotted out - with the appropriate clothing, to hide his satyr features - and was told to show off for the reporters or the high society wives Maria would entertain, or even to show off what he could do to Obie, cementing his supporter to go to MIT early. It also, unfortunately, was a skill he’d had to call upon - less successfully - when he was sent to boarding school. Eventually, he’d figured out how to be obnoxious enough to encourage people to ignore him, to not be upset with him, but it took more than just one or two years.

“Okay, okay, I can be charming if I need to be,” he grumbled. “Are you on the way back now?”

“I should be back next week Friday, once I finish up here at this factory.” There was the sound of rustling paper, and then Pepper hummed. “But Rhodey’s there with you, right?”

“He’s – yeah, he’s just got back. And he’s got three or four more days off before he’s wanted back.” Tony put the water bottle down and rubbed his forehead, pinching at the bridge of his nose. His headache was only getting worse. “I think – I don’t know if he’ll want to come, but I can ask.”

“I’m sure James will help,” Pepper said immediately. “He’s been wanting to hang out for a while. He told me he was going to try and get some extra days off to spend with you, and wasn’t that happy I wasn’t in town.”

Her words soothed something he didn’t even know needed reassurance. It’d been a long while since he’d actually had time to just sit with his friends and talk, and work with SI wasn’t exactly fulfilling in the way he had hoped for when he’d joined, back when he was 18 and fresh off his parents’ funeral. He had expected a role in which he made a difference, something where he could make the world a better place. He’d remembered what his father always said about his efforts in the war, about making the world safe, and remembered how often his mother spoke about the environment, the world around them, and their responsibility to care for it. He’d entered SI, confident that he, as a board member due to his father’s will, could put SI on the map. He was so sure he could ride the sympathetic PR, push forward his ideas for the company, but had quickly become disillusioned with the board. Obie, at least, supported his ideas, but it became clear there were some on the board who disliked Tony because he was fae-folk. His father had been human enough (Tony had found out about Howard’s dvergr blood, and honestly it was more surprising how unsurprised he was) that no one cared, and his mother _looked_ human enough, but Tony could never be mistaken for anything other than fae-folk. Tony's best friend had been, and still was, Rhodey, and Rhodey had been… he’d fought hard to gain respect from the Air Force, from the military in general, and being connected to a satyr was normally the direct opposite of gaining respect. The board did not take well to Tony's best friend being an adze. Pepper put out as many fires related to her PR job and as his personal assistant as she put out as people claimed to have had Tony’s love-child or have had sex with him or had insinuated that she had slept with Tony to get her job. While he knew that his friends loved him… hearing Pepper say that she wanted to be with him, that Rhodey had been looking to get more time with him, went a long way.

It helped.

“Thanks, Pep. I can handle it here, I’m sure. Rhodey can come with me to the meeting.”

She let out a huff of air. “I’d feel better if I could be there. But you’re good at your job – when you don’t let praise go to your head – and I know you can handle it. You have your prototype already up and running, don’t you?”

Tony let out a little laugh. “Bruce and I had perfected it months ago. Every time I brought it up to Obie, he said there wasn’t time for it, or a market. But we’re barely holding steady in the market, and we keep getting slammed for all these missing shipments. With the Aircorp merger… I just thought it was a good time. And we need good press.”

“I’m glad you’re taking a more active role in the company,” Pepper hummed. “We need more people like you in charge. You dream big, and you work to see those dreams happen.”

“Have you figured out what was interrupting the product flow over there?”

As Tony began rearranging the paperwork on his desk, he could almost see Pepper’s eyes flash, and she snarled into the phone, “I don’t know who was in charge of hiring, but their secretary was over-ordering office supplies, and then to cover it up, over-ordered _everything_ , so that it didn’t look as if just the office being irresponsible. But trying to figure that out was a nightmare, because I had to figure out who had authorized the charges. And all of the ordering meant that they couldn’t afford to hire the amount of workers they needed in order to keep up with production orders, so they fell behind, which – oh, Tony, I hate people who can’t do their job in a competent manner. It wasn’t even like the guy was trying to do it on purpose, which is _worse_!”

Tony bit his tongue to keep from laughing – it would only upset Pepper – and instead cleared his throat. “Well, at least you can give them some kind of management seminar and provide them direct oversight for a few days to make sure they get back on track, right?”

“I guess,” Pepper huffed. “Look, Tony, I have to go. But listen to James, and don’t worry about the meeting. You’ll do fine.”

Tony glanced out of his office’s windows at the other cubicles. He had told himself, over and over, that he’d never find himself a 9 to 5 job, that he’d be creative and follow his own rules. He hadn’t been successful with that, because following his own rules only made people think he was buying into the stereotype of the satyr. He loved having fun, he enjoyed alcoholic beverages, and he was a big people person. He hated his solitary life, but going out to clubs or even just going out to eat at a restaurant led to a lot of people assuming he was - well. Clearing his throat, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, thanks Pep. You go slay those dragons.”

He’d have to figure out how to approach the committee, but for right now, he had to look over why exactly this power output wasn’t hitting the numbers it was projected to hit.

***

The meeting, thankfully, wasn’t that far from his apartment, and though it was set to take place pretty early in the morning on a weekend – Tony, like most satyrs, was nocturnal and not good at waking up early - it was relatively easy to roll out of bed and prepare himself for the meeting. Pepper had told him to get there early, and frankly Tony wasn’t about to jeopardize his chances by making a bad impression. Rhodey had to really poke and prod him, but he was up and moving by eight in the morning, a quick (cold) shower getting the most of the sleep out of his system. He didn’t have time to eat, not with the fact that the meeting was at nine and he was moving so slowly anyway, but he gulped coffee down religiously as he walked briskly from his apartment to the boathouse, Rhodey keeping pace at his side.

“Just be cool, man. You’ll be fine. It’s not like they’re looking to attack you, right?” Rhodey murmured.

Tony, dressed sharply in clothes that pulled at his fur but made him look more human, and therefore more approachable (according to the makeup artists Obie hired for him), grunted into his coffee mug.

“Are they?” Rhodey asked, his voice betraying his anger. Rhodey was the best friend to have around; he would go to war for Tony, and Tony loved him all the more for it.

Swallowing his mouthful, Tony sighed. “They don’t like that I’m the Merchant of Death.”

“You really need to ignore that title. Everhart is an ignorant troll and she wrote that to get under your skin,” Rhodey grumbled, folding his arms across his chest.

Tony bit back a yawn and tried not to glare at the overly cheerful runners who were frolicking their way past him and into Central Park at this godawful hour in the morning. “It doesn’t matter if she did it to make me mad; the name stuck, and it’s not going anywhere. You know the media enjoys it too much.”

“Look, if they can’t look past that phony title—” Rhodey began.

“If they can’t look past it, they’ll deny me use of the park, and I really have nowhere else to take this. Not without paying a lot more than I already have, not without a great deal of scrambling, and not without giving in to these hippies,” Tony said impatiently. “My money and my business is just as good as anyone else’s, and I intend to prove it.”

They turned down East Street, making their way along the sidewalk as copious bikers and joggers made their way past them. Rhodey was growling under his breath, and Tony was simply trying to keep his thoughts in order.

“Well, they’re fae-folk themselves, aren’t they? Why would they give you a hard time?”

Tony did _not_ laugh in Rhodey’s face, mostly because Rhodey was one-of-a-kind – the adze were notoriously solitary, and Rhodey’s father had waited until Rhodey was no longer a toddler before taking Rhodey and disappearing to an entirely different state. Once Rhodey was self-sufficient, Rhodey’s father had left, too – and Rhodey, though not as solitary as his family (Tony was evidence enough of that), didn’t enjoy being around other fae-folk either. Then again, the war-like fae-folk were often shunned by the others that lived in harmony with nature. Fae-folk were, by history and by lore and by tradition, caretakers of the environment around them. The killers, the bloodletters, were unnatural and disliked by the rest of the fae-folk. Rhodey, thankfully, never had to interact with the fae in order to get his idea approved.

Tony had had more than his fair share of interactions throughout his life.

“Trust me, taking a life is the worst thing in these people’s lives. They are against killing as a whole, and my designs – my _weapons_ – do nothing but kill. They don’t look favorably on me at all.”

His mother’s people had refused to acknowledge him as related to them in any way, and the few dvergr he’d met disdained the high-tech methods he used to kill, calling them dishonest and coward’s ways of fighting. Tony wasn’t bound by anyone’s rules, and he was going to do what he wanted, and he was going to take care of his father’s company. If that meant being shunned in general by the fae-folk who recognized him, well. Then that’s what it meant.

The boathouse came into view, and by Tony’s watch they were still fifteen minutes out of their meeting time. He wanted to make a good impression, obviously, and he straightened his button-up shirt and suit jacket, fiddled with his tie, and then took a few steps back – careful, making sure his gait looked like a human’s. “How do I look?” he asked, slowly twirling in front of Rhodey.

Rhodey was used to this behavior, though it wasn’t something he personally approved of. “I think you look pretty human, Tones. You sure about this?”

“I need to look approachable and likeable,” Tony replied, shrugging. “People respond better to a human facade.”

Rubbing his chin, Rhodey slowly shook his head. “But most of these people will be fae-folk; maybe you should try to be more… satyr-ish?”

Tony shook his head, pulling his fedora sideways to an angle – and tilting it downwards a bit more, making sure it covered his tiny horns. “There’s no way I’m going to show up to an important business meeting wearing my satyr duds. It’s bad enough that people often can tell what I am by how I sit in my chair, or by the way I walk.”

Rhodey clapped a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Alright, buddy. However you want to play it out, I’ll work with you.”

The boathouse was pretty empty this early in the morning, but there were two women sitting at a long table, one of which who was dressed in a business suit and had a thick binder at her side.

“If I was to guess,” Rhodey murmured.

Smiling, Tony swaggered up to the table and put out his hand to shake. “My name is Tony Stark, head of the R&D department at SI, and a member of the board. I’m looking for the Central Park meeting?”

The one woman who was wearing a loose, airy dress that was draped with black lace lifted an eyebrow at him, but the woman dressed in the navy blue business suit stood up from her seat and took his hand. She was a scant inch taller than him – Tony wasn’t very tall, in part because of his dvergr blood, but also because of his satyr stature – and her face was severe, eyes cold. “Maria Hill, Central Park liaison to the fae-folk that call this park home. You’re early.”

“I live nearby. I’ve even walked through Central Park voluntarily sometimes, when I want to think,” Tony laughed. “And I’m not going to lie, this is very important to me. I really want to see this work out, you know?”

The woman sat down and gestured at the empty seats. “We’re waiting for four others; they should be here shortly.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly the welcoming or even amiable attitude he was hoping for. Tony kept his smile in place, of course, but he began to get nervous. He moved to take a seat near Hill – she was obviously head of this meeting, and the closer you sat to the seat of power, the more you could command attention – and smiled charmingly at the other woman. “And you are?”

“Not interested,” she said dismissively, a slight lisp on her softer syllables.

Tony bit back his instinctive comeback – he needed to make these people like him, after all. Instead, he grinned disarmingly and joked, “That’s an odd name, sweetcheeks. But if that’s what you want me to call you, I’m good with that.”

Her green eyes flashed, and a hint of scales fluttered down her neck, her fingernails becoming sharp and curved for half a second.

Rhodey moved to sit down next to him, giving a curt nod to the two women. “James Rhodes,” he said, succinct and to the point.

After a few seconds, Hill cleared her throat ever so slightly.

The red-haired, green-eyed woman let out a hiss of displeasure. “Natalia,” she said.

“That’s a nice name,” Tony mentioned off-handedly, which was when the door opened. Tony twisted around, the brim of his hat shading his eyes as he stared at the four who entered the room. All were humanoid in appearance except one – one was pixie sized, probably one of the demi-fae, its wings fluttering like jewels in the sunlight as it hovered by the leader’s face.

The leader was a broad-shouldered male, blond hair poking out around a thick brown-furred headdress, a brindled wolf’s head sitting on top of his own. The fur framed pale, fragile skin, a clean shaven face, wide nose, and bright, deep blue eyes. He was shirtless, sprawling tattoos down his left arm, and around his waist was a rough leather belt, holding up leather pants over thick, heavy boots. Tony’s first thought was that he wanted to climb that man like a tree, and it took him a few minutes to even register the other fae that had entered with him. But even he realized he was staring longer than was polite, and with another quick glance he darted his eyes away to the man’s companions.

Behind the leader’s left shoulder was another blond male – but this one had a bit longer hair than the leader, hair more blond and more like corn silk than short fur, strands parted over pointed ears that were pierced by silver rings. A quiver and bow were prominent – which was rare in and of itself, and Tony wondered why this elf had decided to trumpet his heritage so loudly when really, the pointed ears already gave away the fact that the guy wasn’t human. Other than that, though, the man was unremarkable; wearing loose sweats and a well-worn, flexible t-shirt that bared his arms and the armguards he wore by his wrists.

Then, by the leader’s right shoulder, a fairly short – relatively, Tony was still not quite as tall as her – young woman was dressed in battered clothes that looked like they’d seen better days. She looked like a normal human, but there was something off with her proportions that snagged Tony’s eye, made him think twice to label her human. Her eyes were slightly cat-like, the pupils pointed slightly, and the brown of them was practically gold. Around her neck sat a choker made of gold and rubies, something that looked very out of place with her otherwise functional clothing.

“Ah,” Hill said, twisting slightly in her seat to better see the newcomers. “Here’s the rest of our party now.”

The leader at the front stopped, drawn short, and for a minute he frowned, his whole face turning black as if a thundercloud passed over it. Then he met Hill’s gaze and the shadow disappeared. “Maria? I thought Nick was going to show.”

“Something came up last minute for him,” she said, tilting her head to the other seats at the table. “Please, sit, and let’s get this underway. Mr. Stark, Mr. Rhodes, this is Steven, Janet, Clint, and Jane. They have been elected, along with Natalia, by the fae-folk as representatives to parley with you on the matter of renting out part of the park for your exhibition.”

Tony wasn’t quite sure who was who, but figured it’d be made clear eventually. The big buff guy with the wolf-fur-head-cover sat down almost exactly opposite Hill – a position of power, as well, and Tony made note of how the elf and woman arrayed themselves near him. The demi-fae ended up next to Rhodey, and began to grow big once she was in place. Wavy brown hair and a pointed chin slowly increased in size and the wings fluttered against her back as she neatly became the size of a human without disturbing the table one bit. Her eyes were a stunning hazel, and—

Wait a minute.

“ _Jan_?” Tony asked in surprise.

She turned to look at him, a bright, sunny smile on her face. “Tony! It’s been _ages_ , how have you been?”

Janet was part of the Van Dyne clan, one of the biggest demi-fae conclaves on the eastern seaboard, and she had been part of the high society Tony had been in when he was a young kid. He grinned, more at ease by seeing her, and opened his mouth to answer her question and ask some of his own when Hill cleared her throat pointedly.

Annoyance flickered in the back of his mind, but he needed to make nice with them, so he obligingly sat back in the chair, carefully balanced so his legs – differently shaped and formed than human legs – would not begin to ache midway through the meeting.

“I call this meeting of the Central Park fae-folk and Stark Industries’ representative to order. This meeting was requested by the head of the fae-folk county, Thor, and voted upon by the fae-folk that live within the affected areas. The people have voted the representatives you see before you, and they will be bringing their concerns and their recommendations to the Stark Industries people. We’ll go around the table once, where everyone will introduce themselves so we’re all on the same page, and then I’ll cede the floor to Steven.”

Tony inclined his head as the others either nodded or murmured their agreement. It seemed fair enough. Hell, if this worked out well, he’d be able to smooth this over and get home in time to fiddle with the designs Obie had placed on his desk yesterday.

The red-haired young lady smiled, and Tony’s eyes caught on the unnaturally sharp canines. A predator of some type. “You already know I’m Natalie,” she said disdainfully, that slurring of her s’s and softer letters still present. Tony tried to think over which type she might be, but there were a few snake and dragon types she could be, and he’d rather not assume. Instead, he tilted his head at the next person, the other female.

“My name is Jane, Jane Foster.”

Tony’s eyes widened slightly. Jane Foster – Dr. Jane Foster – was an accomplished published academic who looked at how the environment was impacted and affected by outside elements. She wasn’t the greatest person to have on this committee, if only because she would know exactly what kind of environmental impact the exhibition would have, and she hated authority, so she’d go for making the most trouble she possibly could. Still, it was hard not to be awestruck. She was extremely accomplished.

The wolf-head-guy inclined his head regally. “I’m Steven, though most people just call me Steve.”

Next to him, the elf folded his arms. “My name’s Clint.”

When nothing more was forthcoming, Janet leaned forward, all smiles again. “Hey, everyone! I’m Janet, daughter of the scion of the demi-fae, and I’m here mostly because we’ll be the ones disrupted the most.”

Rhodey inclined his head to the table in general. “Hello, my name is Major James Rhodes. Close personal friend of Tony Stark.”

At his turn, Tony leaned forward as much as he could without twisting his legs, and made up for it by spreading his arms expressively. “My name is Tony Stark. My father created and led Stark Industries, a primarily weapon-making business that, I know, isn’t to everyone’s taste. But I’m here today to try and branch SI out, while creating something far more positive for the public. I'd love to hear your concerns and questions in regard to this event.”

Hill nodded sharply. “Steven, you have the floor.”

The man let out a soft sigh – Tony remembered to call him Steve, stay on his good side – but turned to Tony, arms folded on top of the table. “I’ll get right to it, then. Mr. Stark—”

“Tony, please,” Tony murmured.

Steve gave no indication of hearing him. “—Central Park is our home. It’s always been so, since the establishment of Central Park in the 1850s. We of the fae-folk have always been against the warmongering of the humans. Civilized peoples have little to do with death and the taking of life, and there isn’t much we want to do with you, Mr. Stark.”

“An honest and straightforward answer,” Tony said, nodding a little. “I completely understand your concerns. It’s difficult to allow something so against your core beliefs to take place right in your very home. That being said, though – the purpose of this exhibition is to open up new avenues, move SI into an arena that _isn’t_ so focused on death and killing. It’s also meant to be a carnival of sorts, a fun event that we at SI would host so that companies and kids around the world could compete and show off their technology and their ideas. All of the projects would be robotics, so anything from a modified Roomba to a limited AI would be welcome there. We want to find solutions to problems, not create more.”

“You talk big,” the elf – Clint – interrupted. “There’s nothing to back that up. We’re not going to let your blood-soaked hands anywhere near Central Park.”

Tony was taken aback by the vitriol, and it seemed at least Steve and Janet also felt as if Clint had been unnecessarily harsh; Steve put a hand on Clint’s elbow, and Janet cut in quickly.

“As demi-fae, the proposed site for your exhibition is _extremely_ close to our territory, enough so that it raises important concerns,” she said, efficiently drawing attention away from the elf. “We’re understandably worried.”

Tony nodded. “Of course. Well, I can say that we’ve planned for a large amount of press – this is supposed to be a competition, after all – but we’ve also planned to hire security to make sure that event goers remain on the event grounds. We have hired a noted and well-respected fae-folk cleaning company to ensure that no trash is left behind to poison the environment. We’re using locally sourced food trucks and catering companies, and since – since this is a family event – there will be no alcohol, we won’t have to worry about that type of poison either. I’m doing my best to ensure that there are no repercussions because of this event. It is meant solely as a competition.”

Clint’s mouth opened indignantly, but the other woman – Jane – leaned forward. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark, but your word is simply not good enough. Everything you do reeks of the military – every invention, every paper, you’ve ever written all reflect militarized aspects and options. We do not want that kind of reputation here. We do not want new, smarter weapons showcased in a green territory where multiple species live in peace with one another.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Tony had been biting his tongue – hard enough to draw blood – so it was Rhodey who was leaning forward, eyes flashing red in anger.

“I beg your pardon?” Jane asked, drawing herself back.

“You heard me,” Rhodey said, voice dropping low and practically guttural. “You sit here at this table and pass judgement – you, who claim to hate bloodshed? Who was it that tore apart the world and tried to remake it in their images? Who was it that forged the weapons that allowed humans to decimate Europe? Who was it that encouraged and guided the humans into my homelands, into my home, to strip it clean of its resources? Fae have always hunted fae, and in the old days we did not discriminate between human and prey. My kind grew up on the blood, your kind on the flesh. We are neither of us clean in this competition to see who is the bigger killer.”

There was pin-drop silence at the end of his proclamation, and then Tony slid sideways on the chair, made it easier for him to lean forward without pinching the nerves in his legs. “How about this,” he said, an easy smile for the ruffled feathers, aiming the smile at Janet and Steve, the only two who seemed more or less willing to talk like civilized people. “How about you tell me what your concerns are, and you give me time to correct them, and I’ll present solutions to your issues? Because right now, it sounds like there may be some legitimate worries, and some… less legitimate worries.”

“You come to us and you have a soldier at your side,” Natalia drawled. “You come to us and you ask us to let you show off your new technology, as if it will have zero military applications. You come here and it is our home, it is our refuge, it is a place of safety and we will not allow you to sully it.”

“That’s a diplomatic way of saying that we just don’t like you, Mr. Anthony Stark,” Clint said, voice clipped. “But that’s the problem. Your name is a bloody name. Your company has little to no regard for innocent lives in the crossfire. Your weapons are in the hands of those that would harm the world more. We who live in Central Park do not want you within our lands, not even for a single afternoon. We will not be happy to have you among us, and we do not want Central Park to tacitly, even if indirectly, support what you and your company does. We do not need your money. We do not need this publicity. We do not want _you_ , Mr. Stark.”

Well, then.

***

“I don’t think that could have gone any worse,” Tony grumbled under his breath.

Next to him, Rhodey was seething, his skin almost glowing a deep blue-black, his ears laid flat against his head. “They had no right,” he rumbled, his voice a thunderous rattle in his tense chest.

“They have every right – it’s their home, and they don’t like messy guests. I’ll need to check with Central Park’s board, see how this is going to play—” Tony said distractedly, his phone in his hand as he texted off a FUBAR message to Pepper.

Rhodey grabbed Tony’s elbow and led him away from the boathouse, where the other fae-folk were still standing around, talking to one another. “We’re going to go to an expensive restaurant,” he snarled. “We’re going to sit down, we’ll go to a satyr restaurant—”

“You know I hate those places, tourists _always_ go there looking to jump the bones of any unsuspecting satyr—” Tony began, confused.

“—and we’re going to eat food you like, and we’re not going to think about other puissant fae-folk and their high-handed ways.”

“I feel like you’re more upset about this than I am,” Tony remarked philosophically.

Face like a thundercloud, Rhodey skidded to a stop and gripped Tony’s shoulders, glaring him down. “ _You deserved none of that_ ,” he hissed, and wow, yeah, Tony could see that he’d dropped his fangs. Rhodey was _really_ pissed. “They – those – sanctimonious _assholes_ —”

“Okay, it’s like nine in the morning and there are nice families walking to church,” Tony muttered, faintly amused. “Look, let’s – you’re heading back to base tonight, let’s just forget all about it, yeah?”

Rhodey shook his head severely. “I don’t understand why you’re _not_ upset,” he snarled.

With a shrug, Tony let a faint smile play about his mouth. “It’s not like they’re reaction is particularly _new_. Their reasons are, a little, but I’ve had anti-war protestors and anti-military protestors camp out in front of the house one summer when Howard had designed some big missile-thing. The precursor to the Jericho, I think. Anyway.” Tony shrugged again and began walking forward. “I mean, it sucks. I’m also probably faintly in shock, because I can’t get over it, but we’ll deal with it. I highly doubt they can really prevent us from using the park because they don’t like _me_ as a person.”

***

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed out slow and calming-like, trying not to shout. It wasn’t Pepper’s fault, it wasn’t her fault—

“Gods _dammit_!” he snarled, loud enough to make the other scientists out in the lab and even Bruce look up at the room he’d closed himself into to take Pepper’s call.

He could almost see Pepper’s wince, and he definitely heard it in her voice. “Look, Tony, it’s not fair, and I know I’ll be in town tomorrow, but I’ve been checking this whole week. If the committee doesn’t sign off on this, they can legally block the event. You’re going to have to win them over somehow.”

“They have said flat out I’m the problem. I can’t win them over.”

Pepper hissed out a sigh. “Can you get someone else to talk to them for you? Someone else be the face of the event?”

“No, Pep. Obie made it clear this is my project. I’m not given any resources, I have to figure this out on my own,” he said, voice approaching a whine. “Pepper, I really need this to work!”

“Can you spend time with them? I’m sorry, Tony, but without being able to put someone else as the front of the event, I don’t know what to do. When I get in tomorrow we can talk it over, okay? Did Rhodey already leave?”

“Yeah, he left yesterday,” Tony sighed. He noticed a rolling chair in the corner – the interns regularly had races on those rolling chairs, and though this was a storage closet, when someone from Accounting or PR came by, the interns scuttled away like cockroaches – and twisted it so he could sit comfortably. Would it _kill_ SI to order satyr-friendly chairs? Godstakeit. Twisting it so he could rest his chest against the back of it and could comfortably bend his legs, he breathed in deep. “Pepper, I don’t get why everyone’s _fighting_ me on this.”

“Well… have you ever really _explained_ to anyone what you’re doing? Have you explained the technology?”

Letting out a whistling breath, Tony shook his head. “I can’t – I haven’t ever had the time. I – I told the board. They know it. The committee meeting… I haven’t. I didn’t. I didn’t have the chance. Pepper, they _hated_ me. I mean, I knew that – I knew that the fae didn’t like Howard’s efforts, I know they thought he was a sellout, but … I mean, when did this ever affect _me_?” Tony rubbed his free palm over his horn, a nervous gesture that he worked really hard to hide because of how un-human-like it looked. “But they hate me as a person and they never met me. That’s… okay, that’s not new, the media do that all the time, and I mean, _all_ the time, but these seemed like… genuinely nice people. Who hate me. For no reason.”

“Your next meeting is the day after I get back. I’ll go with you to it, talk with them. I’m your PA, I’ll try and smooth things over. But – Tony, I have to ask. Why this? Why now? This is – this would go a hell of a lot smoother with SI backing. Why don’t you ask Stane to give you the backing, and wait until he comes through?”

Tony stared out across the lab. He’d spent countless hours here, day in and day out, weekends and holidays. He’d found Bruce – and he’d had no idea what he’d have done if he hadn’t had Bruce by his side. Science and the future was his life, and he had always wanted to make a difference.

It was just this committee in his way. He’d be able to win them over. He’d won Pepper over eventually, and Bruce. He was an abrasive personality, he knew, and he could be a bit too much to handle sometimes. But they’d come around.

“Because I can _do_ it, Pep. Because I think the company needs a new direction, but the board won’t listen to a satyr making decisions, regardless of who my father is. If I get good PR, if the media really likes this direction, they’ll listen. They’ll _have_ to listen. But Obie… he’s used to things working the way he wants them to work. He’s used to sure-things. And this is most assuredly _not_ a sure thing.”

There was silence on the line, and then Pepper let out a soft sigh. “I trust you, Tony. I think you’ve got amazing ideas. And I think you can do this. Get together some samples of the robotics and the like, get it all in line, and get it ready. I’ll come with you this Saturday—”

“No, Pep, you get in at like ten at night, there’s no way you can recover from jet lag—”

“ _I’ll come with you this Saturday_ ,” she repeated firmly, “and we will see where their hostility is coming from.” She hung up and he looked at the phone a minute before sighing.

“I could come with you.”

Tony looked up to meet Bruce’s concerned eyes. “Nah, don’t worry about it, Brucie-bear. I can handle myself. Your weekends are for you, after all.”

Bruce looked at him skeptically, but shrugged. Being a berserker meant it was very important for Bruce to avoid all confrontations, and really, that meeting seemed to be nothing but confrontational. “You need to be talking this out with someone, you know,” Bruce said casually, offering a hand to Tony to help him up off the chair. “You should meet with my psychiatrist. You’re a bundle of nerves and worse since this whole thing started. You need to find a way to calm down.”

With a chuckle, Tony shook his head. “I really don’t think that’s necessary, Bruce, but I’ll keep it in mind.”

***

What hurt Tony the most, honestly? Was that the fucking wolf had not shown up _once_ this entire week.

***

Saturday morning saw Tony red-eyed and jittery, running around his apartment trying to gather the binder of his presentation, the small robotics, making sure the rat was fed, and trying to corral the Labrador into staying in the living room and not poking its way through his apartment. When the knock came at his door, he gratefully opened it to see Pepper standing there, red hair brilliant in the bright morning sunlight, looking a little glassy but otherwise strictly put-together.

Pepper Potts – Virginia Potts, but her friends called her Pepper – had gone to school to become a business major, but wanted to work in fae-human relations. She’d chosen SI specifically because the head of the company at the time, Howard, had been married to a fae and had a fae son. She’d become disillusioned over time, and her job in fae-human relations division had been more about leading seminar after seminar on sensitivity and discrimination than actually creating a better environment, from the purely physical side.

Tony had met her two years into his work in the R&D department, when she was giving him a dressing-down for making some intern feel “unsafe” because he “leered at her and groped her tits” – the intern’s words, not his. It had taken some time to explain the situation, and Tony, being a genius, had managed to locate the security footage that had mysteriously been missing.

She’d looked him dead in the eye and apologized, and promised to have the intern removed. Tony asked her if she wanted to work specifically for him, as an assistant and second-in-command at R&D. She kept all the scientists on task and on time, she streamlined all the paperwork process, and she was the unofficial liaison between the board and Tony, since Tony was technically a member but in general the board preferred him out of sight, out of mind.

She’d turned him down at first, but over the next two years of interacting with her, he’d convinced her it wasn’t just to keep her around as a shield between him and the board, and him with… most of the company, actually. He rarely liked people on a personal level, and when he did, it hit him hard and fast and he clung to them. It was, in fact, that clinginess that ended his previous relationships – including his with Pepper, which had happened three years after working together and had ended only eight months ago.

…Okay, eight months _seemed_ like a long time, but Tony still missed her, even if he could (now) agree they were better separate than together.

“You look… manic,” she said slowly.

“You told me to gather all the required show-and-tell things, but that includes live animals and I’m sorry but dogs just don’t like me all that much,” Tony said in exasperation. “There’s coffee in the kitchen and my front room now smells like rat pee which is gross and I hate it, and I’m sure the binder is out of order but I can’t tell, and I _still_ need to dress for the meeting.”

“Go. You have five minutes. Get yourself put together. You have a leash, correct?”

“Yeah, yeah, somewhere. Behind the bamboo plant, I think,” Tony called out as he darted into his bathroom and pulled on the pants, pressing up onto his hoofs so that his legs looked practically as straight as a human’s. The pants buttoned a little tight – satyrs were wider in the waist than the average human – and he quickly pulled on the button-down shirt and suit jacket. His hair was hopelessly messy, and he ran a wet comb through it quickly, neatening it to the best of his ability, before neatening his beard as well. The red eyes, well… He grabbed a pair of sunglasses and tucked them behind his ears before snagging his fedora.

“Tony!”

“Yes, yeah, I’m here!” he replied, coming out. “I look okay? I put a bit of concealer on and stuff, but then the dog started barking and I’m technically not allowed to have pets in this building so—”

Pepper gave him a long, considering look. “You’ve stayed up the whole night, haven’t you?”

“What? No. Why would you say that?” he asked, grabbing the coffee cup and moving to the door.

She shook her head and handed him the binder and the rat cage. “I’ve got the dog and the model, you take those. Who are we dealing with at this meeting?”

“Well, last meeting there was the Central Park liaison, two men – Steve and Clint – and three women, Natalia, Jane Foster, and Janet Van Dyne,” he said, making his brisk way down to the street and then through the light foot traffic.

She kept up easily with him, despite her killer heels and the fact that she had an enthusiastic dog bouncing around her ankles. “Janet Van Dyne… I know that name. She gives you a lot of invitations, doesn’t she? And she shows up at the annual SI gala every November.”

Tony smiled weakly. “Well, she’s next in line to become head of the demi-fae in Central Park, so she’s here in a different capacity than… friend.”

Pepper slanted a gaze at him, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it, but she didn’t seem to touch that. Instead, she turned her attention back in front of her and gave a short nod. “Well, tell me what your impressions are, then.”

And Tony – he was actually not that bad at reading people, at getting in their shoes and figuring out what they wanted. It was part of who he was, anyway – figuring out solutions for people’s problems. So he thought back to last weekend, and said slowly, “Natalia – she’s some kind of darker fae. Not dark fae, not like Rhodey – none of them seem to like Rhodey, by the way, which is already a problem – but she’s borderline. And Jane Foster apparently is from a line that used to eat human flesh – but that’s off topic. Natalia seemed bored with the whole thing. I don’t know why she was there, other than being elected. She wasn’t supportive of me, and it seemed like a specific hatred. Like I had done something to her.”

“Have you met her before? Did you turn her down once?”

Tony grimaced – the amount of women who held grudges because he refused to sleep with them was staggering and insulting, but a considerable number of them did it anyway because he was a satyr and all satyrs slept with anything that moved, right? – and shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen her before. I’d almost say vampire, or something snake-like – maybe a witch – but again, I’m pretty sure she’s not dark fae, just close to one. Anyway. Janet didn’t seem to mind me too much, but her concern is the place where the expo will take place; it’s apparently really close to where most of the demi-fae live in Central Park. I told her about security, but I put some more explanation in that binder. Just in case. She’s not that big of a problem. Then there’s Jane, and I mean… I like her papers, I think she’s brilliant, but she also is dead set against me. Then again, she’s notoriously anti-government and anti-bureaucracy, so that might be where this is stemming from. But yeah, she hates my guts. She’s obviously dark fae of some kind, especially if her people used to eat humans – that’s what Rhodey said, but every time I brought it up to him he began to get all glowy-eyed and angry, so I left it alone—”

“Yeah, he wasn’t happy,” Pepper murmured as they turned down the path in Central Park towards the boathouse.

“You already talked to him about this?” Tony asked, then shook his head. “Why do I ask? You always talk about me behind my back.”

“We talk about ways to _help_ you because you are the worst self-sabotaging person I’ve met, I swear,” Pepper muttered. “Quickly, the last two?”

With a huff, Tony shrugged his shoulders. “One was an elf – even I could tell that. He hated me. He made it very clear he hates me as a person. I don’t know why. I didn’t even know there was an appreciable number of elves in New York City, let alone in Central Park, but there you go.”

They paused in the doorway of the boathouse, where once again Maria Hill and Natalia sat at the table they had been sitting at last week, along with Jane Foster.

“And the last guy? It’s not like you to leave someone out, you know.”

Tony exhaled low and long. “The last guy is – god, Pepper, he’s hot. I mean, aesthetically, he seems like a perfect… specimen. Um. He doesn’t – he seems more neutral? Or at least more level-headed. Or at least he let the others yell at me for him. He didn’t do… any of the yelling.” He shrugged again. “He also walks in shirtless, that might be part of the problem.”

For a long moment, Pepper eyed him, and then she gave a short nod. “Right. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

She strode forward, confident, her freckled face set in a warm, comforting smile. “Hello, how are you? My name is Virginia Potts, Mr. Stark’s personal assistant and point on this project. And you are?” she asked, putting her hand out to Hill.

Hill raised an eyebrow at her, but obligingly stood up and shook Pepper’s hand. “Maria Hill, Central Park liaison to the fae-folk. You brought your pet today, I see?”

“Oh, he’s part of the presentation,” Pepper said, smiling warmly. “And these two lovely ladies are?”

Natalia gave Pepper a once-over, and Tony tried to keep his surprise off of his face as he shook Hill’s hand and sat down. Jane was introducing herself to Pepper, and even Natalia ended up grudgingly giving Pepper her name. Pepper sat down, the small model set in front of her, and the leash of Roderick tied to her chair.

“We’re waiting for three others, aren’t we?” Pepper said, the model – a hand made up of metal and polymers – resting to the side as she gestured for Tony to sit down. “We can begin if you want.”

“We’ll wait,” Jane said, but she looked curious. “Did you bring all these things for show and tell?”

Tony inclined his head. “I guess you could call it that, Dr. Foster, but it’s really to just make it clear what this event is supposed to promote—”

“I thought we made it pretty clear last meeting that we don’t want an event with the SI brand on it taking place in the park,” Natalia said, her eyes cutting into Tony with laser-like focus.

Tony opened his mouth to reply, but Pepper was a better PA than he ever deserved; she jumped right in. “SI is attempting to rebrand itself, to create a new line of products that help the world in ways technology can. I’m sure you have valid reasons to dislike SI as a corporation, but you have before you the option to be part of the change Mr. Stark is attempting to head within the company.”

“The roots of anything create the fruit.”

Tony twisted in his chair to see Clint standing there, arms folded, and behind him Steve. Steve at least moved to the table, but Clint remained behind Tony, staring him down.

“You must be Clint; Mr. Stark told me about you,” Pepper said easily, standing up and facing him. In her heels, she was a scant millimeter or two taller than him, and her slight body looked petite against the power in Clint’s, but his demeanor changed when she got in his face. At least, he moved towards sitting instead of standing there, and when Janet finally took her seat, Pepper returned to sitting and smiled at the rest of them.

“We’re here today because SI needs each and every one of you. We’re asking a favor from you, and while we might disagree in some fundamental ways, our goals in this are extremely clear and well-aligned,” Pepper began, launching into her negotiating mode. Tony wished he had half her diplomacy – but his strengths were in other places. Instead, he flipped open the binder in front of him just as Pepper turned for it.

She flashed him a smile and turned back to face the rest of the group. “My name is Virginia Potts, Mr. Stark’s PA and liaison between SI’s R&D department and their production division. We work tirelessly to try and make the world a better place, and our technology is used in countless ways to save lives.”

“And to take lives, too,” Clint interjected.

Pepper smiled sadly, which seemed to throw Clint a bit. “You’re very right, of course. Technology of all kinds can be used to help, or harm. SI does its best to track down and reclaim missing shipments, and has several ironclad contracts with the military to prevent the fall of proprietary technology and blueprints into the hands of those that would misuse it, but we’re only human. Mistakes are made, and this initiative here is part of how we want to take steps away from those mistakes, towards something better.”

“You talk real well, ma’am,” Steve said. “But somehow this sounds just like PR spin. We don’t want Central Park affiliated with SI. It’s as simple and clear-cut as that. This is our home.”

Pepper gestured to the different items Tony had prepared for today. “You won’t even let us speak? I knew that the fae could be stubborn-minded, but I thought they would at least do us the courtesy of hearing us out.”

Steve’s eyebrows snapped together, and he opened his mouth, but Tony had been silent long enough, struck dumb by Steve’s washboard abs and musculature. Clearing his throat, Tony quickly stood up, balancing carefully so that he didn’t upset the rat cage or overexcite Roderick. “I realize I may not have explained this event all that well last meeting, and so I prepared for you a bit of – what did you call it, Dr. Foster, show and tell? That’s exactly what I wanted to do. What you see sitting next to Ms. Potts is one of the many finalized products we’ve created, but it’s the process of years and years of hard work. Dr. Bruce Banner and myself have managed to create prosthetics that move as naturally as any robotic arm could be expected to move. Not only that, but this technology is affordable and can even be free in some circumstances. Ms. Potts, why don’t you pass that binder around?”

She smoothly slid the binder to Janet, who looked at it with interest.

“Prosthetics, as you know, are necessary items for many, many people in our world. They help people regain mobility and a sense of self; they provide balance and comfort. But many prosthetics are just barely functional; fingers can’t really move independently from one another, leg prostheses are stiff. Dr. Banner is a leading mind in neurochemistry and biology, and I’m not too shabby myself when it comes to machines.” He winked an eye at Steve and Steve’s eyebrow twitched. “Together, we’ve not only managed to come up with a working prosthetic – a fully working prosthetic, that links into the nervous system, works almost as perfectly as an organic arm would – but we’ve managed to find a way to make it cost-effective. Medical technology, for all that it’s lightyears ahead where it was just five years ago, still has a long way to go, and I believe if Stark Industries branches out into the medical field there are a lot of benefits for many people. These prosthetics wouldn’t just be for show, or comfort – you could flex your feet again, derive sensory input like heat and pressure, entwine metal fingers with organic ones. You could do so much more. Of course, we ran extensive testing. Meet Rapscallion.”

Tony opened the top of the rat cage and clipped the tiny harness onto the rat, so that he wouldn’t run away (or scare someone who might, possibly, not like rats). Lifting out the spotted black-and-white rat, Tony grinned at the tiny twitching nose. “Rapscallion didn’t lose his leg from any kind of wound. He was born with three legs, and had learned to compensate. He didn’t have previous neurological understanding of his left hind leg to help him. But when fitted with our prosthetic, he can use his hind leg exactly as if he’d been born with it.”

Placing the rat on the table, Tony let Rap skitter around, smiling when Natalia stroked the top of the animal’s head and when Clint put his fingers out for the rat to sniff.

“But, while rats are a good test object, we needed more testing to determine the safety of the prosthetics. Rap here has had his leg for about a year and a half now, but the real breakthrough was old Roderick here.”

At hearing his name, the golden lab’s tail began beating the floor, hard, and his body began wriggling eagerly.

Tony couldn’t bend down, not really – not without revealing how different his legs were and how… inhuman he looked. Long practice kept him from dropping to rub his hands over Roderick’s head and letting the dog lick his face. Instead, he caught Pepper’s eye and she unclipped the leash.

“Come here, boy,” Tony murmured, and Roderick was over like a shot, prancing around Tony’s feet – completely oblivious to the fact that his lower right foreleg was made of metal and glass. “Roderick – Roddy – was one of the first dogs to get the truly successful prostheses that did what we wanted it to do with cheaper, more marketable materials that wouldn’t break the bank of the average Joe Smith on the street. All of this led up to a prosthesis that looks like that hand, there.”

Roddy shifted around, and Tony patted his head again before moving over to take the hand from Pepper’s spot.

“The prosthesis currently looks exactly as it is – metal and polymers, meant to be strong and a good replacement. But place it up against skin and engage the camouflage option—” Tony pressed the correct button, and there was a soft beep before the polymer lit up with soft light that more or less matched the hue of his skin, turning the metal hand into something more realistic looking. Bringing it close to his mouth, he continued, “It can respond to pressure, even as light as a puff of air.” He blew gently and watched the fingers twitch.

“It’s an impressive piece of technology—” Dr. Foster began disapprovingly, but Tony continued as if there had been no interruptions.

“In the binder is the complete proposal sent out to Central Park and the SI board. It’s the most current and updated form of it, and I’ve done my best to make sure there’s no issues anywhere. Look through it; tell me where you find any issues.”

“Stark, we already made our issue quite clear,” Natalia jumped in. “We don’t want you. We don’t want your name.”

Pepper picked up Rap and petted him before lifting her face to Natalia and smiling the smile Tony only saw when she was getting ready to eviscerate someone. “What I’m hearing from this table is that no one came to the table to resolve problems, only make new ones. You came here with the express intention of making sure this didn’t succeed. Since that’s the case, I feel that there’s not much time to be wasted, is there? You don’t need to hear about its success rate – phenomenally high, by the way – or about the vets we’ve helped already with our experimental models. You don’t need to know just how hard we’ve all worked to get to this position, or that you aren’t the first people to push back on this – starting with the SI board themselves. You don’t need to know anything at all, because you all know exactly what you want, exactly what you believe. There’s nothing to be said. Thank you for this opportunity to see just how stubborn the fae really can be.”

She neatly picked up the binder – it had been moved around the table, but she picked it up from where it sat opposite to her effortlessly – and placed Rap back in his cage. Roderick she clipped his leash back on – he had moved over to Clint, and the elf had been petting the overeager puppy – and handed the leash to Tony.

“Good day to all of you,” she said with a serene smile. “We will take our exhibition elsewhere.”

She strode out of the boathouse, carrying the binder and the rat cage effortlessly, and Tony trailed in her wake. He had never been more in awe of her than right now, and he walked in silence beside her as they made their way back to his apartment and up the stairs. It was a little odd that she wasn’t saying anything – normally they’d be planning at this point, figuring out where else they could hold the event, how much money he’d lost in the deposit and where he’d have to get another deposit, where else he could take the event. He could hire out a conference or convention center, he supposed, but… the whole process would take another month or two in planning, in getting the paperwork in order. Shaking his head, he unlocked his apartment and walked inside.

“Those _idiotic hypocrites_!”

Jumping in surprise, he turned around as Pepper gently placed the rat cage and then threw the binder on the couch.

“How _dare_ they – oh, we don’t want your name, it’s associated with weapons, so when you actually want to make something other than weapons we won’t let you! Of course technology can be weaponized – _anything_ can be weaponized, a fucking _shield_ could be weaponized if you use it right, I don’t under _stand_ —”

Tony placed the model hand on the couch and took Roderick’s leash off before catching Pepper’s hands. “Pep, Pepper, it’s okay, it’s okay! Look, we’ll – I didn’t realize, you know, they really don’t like me, right? So we’ll go somewhere else, we’ll find someone else to take the money.”

Pepper was trembling, her cheeks pale and her eyes flashing.

“James told me they were hardheaded but I had _no idea_!” Pepper snarled.

Tony patted her hand. “I’m used to it. It’s always me you know? It’s always me being a satyr, or me being too human, or me being… me.”

Pepper finally seemed to snap out of her towering fury, and her hands clenched onto his wrists.

“You, and I, are going to binge watch Battlestar Galactica and we’re going to order in from that Thai place nearby and I’m going to groom your hair and you’re going to braid mine and we’re going to deal with this tomorrow.”

Tony smiled tiredly. “Sure thing, Pep.”

***

“I was hoping to meet you here, actually.”

The white wolf huffed.

Tony smiled tiredly. He was – he was pretty drunk, even for satyr standards, and it was, ohhh… midnight? One in the morning? Pepper was passed out on his couch, and Roderick was sleeping on his floor. He was not used to having Pepper sleeping in his place, not when she was not in his bed, and it allowed too much thought over his many failures. So here he was, wandering the paths in Central Park, waiting for the wolf to appear, and here it was. Huge, beautiful, and honestly the blue eyes reminded him a little of Steve’s.

He let out a sigh and sat down on a tree stump, picking disconsolately at the blue flowers at its base.

“It’d be easier if, you know, I had history with them, right? Like… if one of them had been an employee I treated badly, or something. If one of them was… I dunno. One of my exes. They all thought I was too much to handle, after all.” Tony shook his head, staring at the blue flowers.

“He was pretty hot, you know? I like him. _Liked_. Liked him. It’s – you know, he’s got that look that you can trust him. And it makes me wonder, am I really that bad? You know? If someone that wholesome doesn’t like me…”

The wolf let out a soft whine and stepped forward, putting its muzzle on Tony’s knee.

Letting out a long breath, Tony bent forward, his knees flexing, the cool night air ruffling the brown fur that covered his legs. He pressed his forehead against the white fur, rubbed the nubs of his horns against the heavy head.

“I just – it’s always the guys that hate me that I like, you know? Ty, Whitney… I mean, Pepper hated me at the beginning. She grew to like me, but it took… time, you know. I’m not easy to like.” Tony sniffled a little, tried to keep his voice steady.

“We’ll move the event, of course. We’ll put it somewhere else, I guess. It’s just that there… the Central Park was a symbol. It was – it’s peace, and growth. It’s what I want for the company, you know? It’s important to protect the world, but there are more ways than just, you know, creating better guns. Bigger guns. I’m tired of creating guns, you know? So tired of it.”

The wolf licked his hand.

With a wet laugh, Tony sat back up and dragged the back of his hand across his eyes. “Well. You know. I’m talking to a wolf, because I have no one else to really talk to. Pepper’s – Pepper is mad, is pissed as hell at them, and Rhodey thinks I should just drop them. And everyone at SI wants me to drop it, too, so I don’t know why I’m fighting for it anymore.”

There was a rustle in the bushes, and Tony jumped to his feet, his nerves accelerating him into fight or flight response.

The white wolf let out a sneeze and shook its head before walking down the path. Tony watched it go sadly.

It stopped and turned to look over its shoulder at Tony. When Tony didn’t move, it huffed impatiently and stomped a foot.

“Oh – you want me to follow?” Tony said, stumbling forward and slowly finding his feet. The paths were dim and dark, and it was great that the wolf was white, because it made it a lot easier for Tony to see him. A few more twists and turns, and then they were suddenly back on 79th, and the wolf looked down towards Tony’s apartment and then back at Tony.

“Time to go home, huh?” Tony said wearily. “Yeah. Sorry, bud. I didn’t – I’ll try to stop bothering you.”

The wolf gave a soft whine and nudged its nose against Tony’s thigh. Absently, Tony patted the wolf’s head, staring blindly down the street towards where his apartment was. “It’s okay, bud. I’ll be okay. I always am.”

***

His hangover made the bright morning sun worse, and Pepper was staggering around the kitchen, getting coffee going.

“We’re going to have to figure out a new plan,” he mumbled, slumping over the breakfast bar, watching her move through his kitchen. “There are other places we can rent, though none so… convenient as the park. But we could even hold it outside of New York, you know? Pull it out so that we’re really, _really_ not affiliated with SI.”

“You told me you wanted it close to SI,” Pepper pointed out, voice raspy as she scrabbled at his Tylenol. “Do you have human-strength Ibuprofen anywhere in the house?”

Tony made a vague gesture at the drawer by the oven. “I know I said that, but maybe I was wrong.”

“I don’t think you’re wrong,” Pepper sighed. “I think you’re right – you need people to realize and put together the event and SI, you need people to realize SI is taking a different direction here. I’ll look into convention centers, see if I can find something around here that isn’t… too bad.”

Her phone rang sharply.

Tony eyed it, and then glanced at the clock. It was close to ten in the morning on a Sunday.

Pepper frowned and picked up the phone. “Virginia Potts speaking.”

There was a pause, and then she let out a short bark of laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Tony leaned forward.

“Yes, I do think this is a laughing matter. Mr. Stark and myself do not need to subjugate ourselves to that type of behavior. We’ll find another option.”

The tinny voice on the other side increased ever so slightly.

Pepper let out a huff. “Next Saturday. And we’ll be working together this time, I assume?”

More muffled speech.

“Saturday, then.” Without further conversation, Pepper ended the call and looked at Tony strangely. “The committee wants to try and work things out. They asked Ms. Hill to call us and set up a meeting, same time and same place as yesterday’s.”

Tony furrowed his brow. “Why? I thought they were all very clear.”

Pepper shrugged. “They changed their mind, apparently.”

Tony drummed his fingers, juggling things in his head. “This is still the cheaper option. I’d prefer to use Central Park, because it’s the fae-folk home and because it is a symbol of peace and of growth. But I don’t want to be jerked around again. What would you do?”

“I’m pissed off enough that I would say no just to spite them,” Pepper said bluntly, but her mouth was twisted in a soft smile. “That being said, I know why Central Park is an important location for you. If you think it’s worth it, you should give them another try.”

“You’d come with me?” Tony asked.

Pepper pressed a few more buttons on her phone before nodding. “I’ve got that Saturday free. I’ll be there. So you’re doing it?”

Heaving a sigh, Tony nodded. “Yeah, third time’s the charm, right?”

***

Bruce paused by Tony’s office, fiddling with the hem of his shirt and the glasses on the bridge of his nose. “So… how did it go?”

Groaning, Tony slumped over his desk and thumped his forehead against the desk. “Don’t – I don’t even know. Out of the five people on the committee? Four of them _hate_ my guts. I honestly thought it was a solid no, you know? And then I get a phone call saying that they want another meeting…”

Bruce put a hand on Tony’s shoulder, patting Tony’s stiff neck. “I know – I know we put a lot of effort into this, you know? We tried our hardest, we both keep envisioning things so different. I’m tired of doing biological weapons, you’re tired of designing targeting systems. But it might be time to let this one go, you know? I’m tired of seeing you stress out about this. I just want you to be okay.”

“I want to do this, Bruce. I’m finally – this would finally prove my worth to the board, make it clear that I have good ideas too, you know?” Tony said stubbornly, fighting not to rub his horns to show just how nervous he was. “I’ll get it done.”

“We’re all rooting for you here, you know,” Bruce said, glancing over his shoulder. “Well. Everyone in Lab 1.”

Tony rolled his eyes. He knew Lab 2, and the focus of that lab was really explosives, more bang for the buck. Lab 1, where he worked with Bruce and a few other mid-level scientists on the actual nuts and bolts of their machines. Lab 2 were a bunch of risk-taking jockeys who thought science was only legitimate if something flashy happened. “I wouldn’t expect Lab 2 to care,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I just – I’m glad you guys want this to succeed, I guess.”

“You talking to anyone about it? Brainstorming? Stane is keeping Pepper on her toes recently,” Bruce asked gently. “If you want, you can bounce ideas off me. And have you seen the few applications that have already come in? It’s amazing. There are some kids in there, Tony. _Kids_.”

And that – that right there is why Tony was fighting so hard for this. He could do this, give people a boost, a platform to showcase their work and their skills, their knowledge and their abilities. He grinned widely and put the thought of next Saturday’s meetings out of mind. “There’s this one, a refracting—”

“—refracting panels!” Bruce finished, eyes lit up. “That was one of the most amazing applications of the current stealth technology I ever saw; they literally have created an invisibility cloak! A working model, even!”

Tony enthusiastically threw himself into the conversation, caught up in the amazing science.

 

**T-MINUS 5 MONTHS TO SHOWCASE**

***

Pepper knocked on his door, and Tony hopped up to open it, smoothing down the small wrinkles in his suit jacket. When their eyes met, her grey eyes softened imperceptibly. “Did you sleep at all last night?” she asked.

“Obie’s up my ass about this. If I don’t get confirmation… Pepper, this already has been delayed _two_ months to file the paperwork correctly and even _get_ to this point. And now we might have to somehow find another venue – I don’t know.”

She eyed him a long moment before asking quietly, “Do you want to cancel the meeting?”

The idea was foreign enough to have him blinking at her in confusion. “What? Why?” he asked.

“Tony… can I step in?”

He fidgeted a little, nervous. “Pepper, if we don’t get going, we’re going to be late, you know?”

“I know, I know, Tony, but – please, five minutes. I just want to get a reading of what _you_ want.”

With a sigh, he stepped back and let her walk into the apartment. “What’s so important, Pep?”

She set the drink carrier down – he hadn’t noticed she’d been holding it, and the smell of coffee seduced him so he almost missed her first words. “Rhodey and I have been talking—”

Tony let out a frustrated sigh, turning away from the drinks and folding his arms. “If you have problems with something I did—”

“Tony, just – Rhodey and I talk because we’re your _friends_. Friends ask one another if a shared friend is in a bad mood. They want to know how to fix it, what caused it – this is _normal_ ,” Pepper sighed. “Rhodey asked me if you were okay.”

When she stopped, Tony spread his arms expectantly. “And?” he demanded.

“He said you were very – quiet, at the meeting he went to. And you weren’t defensive, at all. You forget I’ve seen you in the media, I’ve seen you when people are being assholes to you in meetings or in corporate settings or in literally countless other ways—”

“Are you mad that I’m… not mad?” Tony asked, confused.

Pepper paused and shook her head. “Not really. I’m… _concerned_. James and I both are. You’re never this quiet, Tony, not with something you really like. With something you really want. Remember when you wanted Banner in Lab 1, not Lab 2?”

Tony smiled faintly and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just – I’m trying to be the responsible guy now, you know? That thing with Aircorp… you know, Garvin kept insinuating that it was perfectly fine to be irresponsible. People always look at me and assume that’s – that’s just what satyrs are. And I want the board to take me seriously, I want these people to treat me seriously.” He paused, because he really did want to be on their way, he wanted to be going, but he knew she would call bullshit on his reasons. Heaving a sigh, he mumbled, “And they’re not wrong, you know. My company – they’re right. And I can understand why they would think I wouldn’t change.”

“You’re being awfully understanding,” Pepper said doubtfully.

“I mean – I’m pissed, but it’s more at myself. I can read the headlines, I know how people see my company… I shouldn’t have been as naïve as I was, thinking I could change things around just by saying I would.” Tony glanced at the clock, and then over at Pepper. “I just want to keep trying. I want people to see that I really do want this to be turned around. I want this to be something positive coming out of the company.”

Pepper shook her head and moved forward. The motion was entirely unexpected, so Tony froze as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face into his shoulder.

“You’re a good person, Tony Stark. Don’t let anyone tell you differently,” she whispered fiercely.

Warmth bloomed in his chest, and he felt his cheeks darken. “Aw, c’mon, Pep. We’re already late, you know.”

Pepper stepped back, and she shook her head, a gentle smile on her face. “We can stand to make them wait. They weren’t exactly polite or kind last time, either.”

With a roll of his eyes, Tony stepped forward to the door. “Can we go now?”

Grinning, Pepper reached for the drinks and handed one to Tony. “Let’s go. We’ll see what they have to say. It’s not that great of a morning, but it means that if they disappoint us the weather can match the mood. We could sit in and binge-watch another show, order some Greek this time. Just relax and put this mess behind us.”

“That’s the spirit,” Tony chuckled, sipping at the black coffee. Caffeine was something like ambrosia to satyrs; he was pretty much addicted to it, and he never once regretted it. “C’mon, Ms. Potts. I have an umbrella big enough for the two of us.”

***

The meeting was… more or less well-meaning. At least, better meaning than the last two. Less well-meaning than he would have liked. Because it turned out that just because they were willing to play ball now – at least, they _said_ they were – didn’t mean they were giving him much space on this. He could feel a headache pounding against his horns, and Pepper’s smile had taken on that flat, fierce quality that meant she was at the end of her patience in negotiating. They were going over every single aspect of the event with a fine-toothed comb, and it had been a long two hours.

“You want to have catering,” Dr. Foster began.

“We’ve already discussed this, back at the beginning when you asked about how we were intending to include fae-headed businesses with the event,” Pepper replied sweetly.

“Yes, but the question isn’t who’s doing the catering, it’s what you intend to cater. There are a lot of foods that are detrimental to quick cleanup. They cause a lot of trash, they—”

Tony fought the urge to rub his horns and instead shifted awkwardly on the seat, trying not to stress his legs. He normally didn’t sit this long in one place, and the small pains shooting up his hooves was making him testy. “Why don’t,” he growled, “why don’t we let Janet tell us what types of food she’d prefer, and I’ll look at the budget, and we’ll go from there, how’s that? If she’s included in the organization of this?”

“I think Steve should be included in the organization, then. Meetings, and everything – he should be there,” Clint grumbled.

“Does he really need to be there?” Tony asked, annoyed. “If Janet’s on there, do you not trust her or something?”

Clint bristled, half-standing up, but Steve put a hand on his arm, pulling him back down into the seat. “Is there a problem for you to have two of us on the organization committee?” Steve asked, voice short.

 _Besides the fact that I’d stare at your ass too much?_ Tony shook his head. “If it’s a make or break it point,” he said, trying not to grit his teeth, “I don’t see why it would be a problem.”

“Look, I’m trying here! I’d like the same consideration from you!” Clint snarled.

That was the last straw for Tony. He shoved away from the table, head lowered as if this was ancient times and he was going to physically attack. “I am _doing exactly what you want me to do_ ,” he snapped.

Pepper turned towards him, starting to reach and put a hand on him, and honestly, he had been really calm up until now, and maybe she was right that he should have been angrier before now, because now that he was mad, he was _pissed_.

“I have sat here and tried to show you how I’m trying to turn this company around,” he snapped. “I don’t like being in the spotlight—”

“I’m so sorry that doing the right thing puts you out of your comfort zone, Mr. Stark,” Steve snapped back. “But your company—”

“Do any of you _know_ how companies even work?!” Tony yelled back. “I own the company, but I have to work with the board, and they like what’s tried and true. Getting _any_ new idea past them is nearly _impossible_. Do you know how hard it was to get them to put _tracking chips_ in the shipments? This is so far out of their wheelhouse that they aren’t even giving me SI resources, this is all something _I’m_ funding and I’m doing my damnedest here to pull this together but you guys are picking apart something that we went over _last fucking meeting_!”

Clint was standing, too, and Dr. Foster’s eyes were narrowed. Natalia was – you know, Tony didn’t even know what emotion that was on her face, and he didn’t care. He was beyond furious.

“Tony,” Pepper murmured, her eyes worried and even scared. It almost stopped him – he was probably fucking up big time, and the whole point of this was to show he knew how to _not_ fuck up – and then Natalia leaned forward.

“You seem to think you’re absolved of what is done in your name, when your name on the side of the company means you tacitly agree with everything done by your company. And the weapons out in the world – they are _your_ designs, and there’s nothing else really to be said about that.”

Tony rounded on her. “There’s _plenty_ to say about that!” he snarled. “If it were up to me, we wouldn’t even _be_ in the weapons-making business to begin with! There’s countless other technology fields that do a lot more good in the world that would be able to give us revenue. _That being said_ , you think the weapons we make just, what, funnel straight into some archetypical ‘bad guy’s’ hands?! _Ninety-fucking-percent_ of our weaponry goes exactly where we want it to go and it protects a shit-ton of people! And military contracts _are not just guns_ you know! They’re body armor and tanks, shields and defensive weapons! Your premise is inherently flawed because you think pretty words can save the world! _It fucking can’t_! There’s no way in hell you honestly believe that, because if you did, my estimation of your intelligence drops _several motherfucking rungs down the intelligence ladder_.”

There was dead silence, and then Steve stood up, all broad shoulders and coiled muscle. “Enough, Mr. Stark. I think you’ve answered enough questions today. We’ll meet again next week for our final deliberation.”

“For the record,” Pepper cut in, voice a laser cutting through everyone’s beginning attempts to rise, “this has been the most unprofessional meetings I’ve ever witnessed. I’m sure Ms. Hill can agree with me, though she allowed this to continue despite that anyway, so perhaps she also does not know what professionalism looks like. But mark my words, the only reason we’re sitting here, at this table, is because Mr. Stark thinks that it is worth it to work with you people. I and many of his close friends have counseled him differently. This circus-like behavior is ill-becoming of you and is certainly something my employer does not deserve. You may think you have the upper moral ground, gentlepeople…” Pepper trailed off, meeting the gaze of each and every person in the room, staring them down until they either looked away or looked guilty – and everyone, even Natalia and Hill, ended up looking that way. “You may think that, but past behavior and today’s fiasco shows that you are all nothing more than bullies hoping to increase your social standing by yelling at someone for things no one can change. Your naïveté is showing.”

Hooking her arm in Tony’s, she drew him to his feet and picked up the large umbrella before leading him out the door.

Once outside, Tony realized he was trembling. “Shit,” he hissed. “Pepper, I fucked up.”

“That you did,” she said, sighing a little. “But we all fuck up once in a while. And honestly, of all the places to fuck up, this is not highly important. They’re probably going to turn you down next week, you know.”

“I know,” he mumbled. “I really am sorry.”

She nudged him a little, the pattering rain soothing. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing you haven’t said to me before. It’s just the first time you said it to strangers. I doubt it’s going to get very far.”

***

The beeping noise was irritating, interrupting his sleep, and on automatic Tony groped for the offending object and pressed the button that would stop the noise.

“Did you mean it?”

Tony blinked, trying to understand what was going on.

“Tones!”

“Yeah, yeah, Rho – Rhodey. What—” Blearily, Tony realized his phone was pressed against his ear, and he sat up on his mattress, rubbing his horns against the leg of his desk. “What’s going on?”

“You told the committee you were going to stop weapons production?”

“I—” Tony shook his head and tried to comprehend what was happening. “What?”

“I thought you wanted to have more options and shit, not that you wanted to stop making weapons altogether!” Rhodey yelled. “Now I have my superiors up my ass why I’ve been supporting you in this endeavor. Oh, and I’m apparently supposed to remind you that you have actual contracts with us and breaking contract will be _very_ messy!”

The phone clicked, and Tony squinted at it in the darkness. A growing feeling of uneasiness filled his chest, and he glanced quickly at the clock. It was ten in the morning, Sunday morning, though his blackout curtains were working well – it looked like it could be five in the morning. Normally, he didn’t sleep this late; he had work to get to, and the weekends were when he could tinker unencumbered with his ‘bots. Sunday was a day off, but he’d had that disastrous meeting yesterday, he’d had a bit more to drink than he normally would (on his own at least), so he wasn’t firing on all cylinders at the moment. Still, it felt like he should have understood what Rhodey was yelling about…

He glanced at his phone notifications and winced. Thirteen missed calls from Rhodey, three from Obie, twenty-six from Pepper, and two from Bruce.

Deciding he was going to do this easy way first, he redialed Bruce.

“Tony?” Bruce asked, his voice the faintly tinny sound phones had when being used on speaker.

“Hey, Bruce, what’s happening?” Tony asked, trying to make his voice light and casual and barely managing to stumble past ‘sleepy bewilderment.’ “I, uh, I missed a call?”

“Yeah,” Bruce sighed, long and slow. “Yeah, I don’t know what’s been going on with the meetings – well, scratch that, I know they haven’t been going well, but you’ve been ranting about it with someone else because you’ve stopped using me as your personal therapist…” Bruce trailed off, seemingly lost, before clearing his throat. “Anyway, the point is, I’m not super tuned in to what’s been going on with your meetings, but let’s just say that someone had been recording your words at the meeting yesterday.”

“ _What the ever-loving fuck_.”

“Yeahhhh,” Bruce said, drawing the word out. “Yep. And, well. I mean, I’m all for supporting you – we’ve almost solved the problem of miniaturizing the arc reactor, after all – but Stane seems to be on the warpath, because he’s not happy, and well, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Bruce, I just woke up. I was nervous and jittery after yesterday, and I hadn’t had sleep for a while…” Tony rubbed the heel of his hand on the bridge of his nose, pressing down almost painfully. “I just – well, I crashed last night around midnight and I just woke up. _Fuuuck_.”

There was a quiet on the other line, and then a shuffle of papers. “Okay, okay. Damage control. I think you should call Pepper first. Stane is not… not happy. And he won’t help, you know. So it’s just – call Pepper, and she might have good news for you.”

“How is any of this good?” Tony groaned, wishing he could crawl back into his bed and forget he even tried to market a new kind of tech to the market.

“Have you turned on your television?” Bruce asked, and Tony might be hallucinating, but he thought he could hear a smile in Bruce’s voice.

Tony grumbled under his breath as he searched through the cannibalized pieces of machinery for the remote that would turn on his room’s television. “Not yet,” he grunted. “What should I be looking for?”

“Call Pepper, Tony,” Bruce said gently. “Be prepared to keep your head down when you come in on Monday. Don’t expect to see Pepper around for at least a week, if not longer. But I think this will work itself out.”

Bruce disconnected, and Tony stared at the phone for a long moment before redoubling his efforts to find the remote. When he located it, he flipped on the television.

“—stunning soundbite showcases a new and fresh direction that Stark Industries might be taking in the future. What could this mean for the technology market? What would it mean for our military? More, at noon.”

 _Click_.

“—don’t quite know what to say. The person speaking has been positively identified as Anthony Edward Stark, heir to Howard Stark, and current director of Stark Industries’ research and development department.”

“One thing that _can_ be said is that the meeting at which Mr. Stark was at yesterday is part of SI’s ongoing negotiations to rent out an area in Central Park for a robotics-themed technology exhibition. This exhibition, held 8 months from now in Central Park, was supposed to reveal technology that would revolutionize medical prostheses—”

 _Click_.

“—highly irresponsible. Spitting on the memory of his father and of our brave armed forces who daily put their lives on the line? Who does Tony Stark think he is?”

Tony turned off the television.

Well, shit. What the hell was he supposed to do now? And who the _hell_ had leaked what he said to the press? Fuck that, who had been recording or whatever shit it was that had gotten his words out?

He needed coffee to deal with this. Dragging himself into the kitchen, he scratched at his stomach and slumped over the breakfast bar. “Jarvis, coffee.”

There was an acknowledging beep, and the coffee maker lit up and began creating the caffeine Tony desperately needed right now. DUM-E beeped behind him, and Tony rubbed the back of his neck.

Everything was spiraling out of control, and he was quickly losing his drive to continue. Normally, any media presence was a good media presence, but if the media hated it this much—

He was stalling, he knew. DUM-E wheeled over to him clumsily, the claw opening and closing in silent comfort.

“Yeah, buddy. Time to face the music,” Tony sighed, pouring a cup of coffee and sitting on the stool. “Bring me my phone?”

With a whirr, DUM-E trundled off, and Tony tried to think of a way he could spin this for Pepper so she didn’t completely castrate him for this. She hadn’t seemed too upset yesterday, but she always ended up having to deal with his PR messes and she _hated_ that part of her job.

The phone appeared over his shoulder, and Tony gave a small laugh, catching it before it became hysterical. Taking in a deep breath, he took the phone and dialed Pepper’s number.

“What the _hell_ , Tony?” came the shout down the line.

“Does it help if I say I’ve only been awake, like, ten minutes?” he sighed. “Pep, I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

“Tony – Tony, stop.”

Tony stopped talking and bit his tongue. He was going to lose his fur over all this stress, he really was, and it would serve him right.

There was a heavy sigh. “The board isn’t happy. Just – when you go in to work tomorrow, lay low, stay out of sight. The one upshot is that the media _loves_ this angle. The hashtag ‘a lot more good’ has taken off, and the social media loves you. In fact, a lot of the counterculture media loves you.”

“There’s more to it,” Tony sighed. “There’s always more.”

Pepper sucked air against her teeth. “You’ve drawn in more of the younger crowd, which, let’s face it, that’s where SI is losing business, badly. Our products are too often tainted by our military presence that the 18 to 25, hell, even to 35 demographic, none of them look for our technology when buying for their home.”

“Not that we have a lot of technology for people to casually use,” Tony grunted.

“We don’t – but we have cameras, security cameras, we have high-end equipment for microphones and…” Pepper stopped and sighed. “And you know as well as I do. This isn’t helpful. What I’m saying is, you have, with your few seconds of going off the rails, revitalized our youth demographics. I just need to point that out to the board. Because what you have done, is you’ve made the military, the conservative buyers, and pretty much every die-hard Republican, completely pissed off.”

“Yeah,” Tony whispered.

There was a silent pause at the end of the line, and then Pepper said quietly, “I think you told the truth. I think you were completely right in everything you said. You know that, right?”

Tony laughed wetly. “Pepper, this means that someone was in that meeting recording what I said. I may not even get their vote. I know for a fact that I’m the weak link at the company – hell, it’s why I haven’t been on the board since I was young and naïve after my – after my parents passed. I – the board will try to toss me for this.”

“They can’t. Tony, I will tell you, don’t worry, okay? If your MIT partying days, if your race, if the fact that you’ve called the board assclowns to their face once already, if _all of that_ hasn’t kicked you out, this will not. I can sell this to the board, don’t worry. You aren’t going to be kicked out. I’m on your side here, hell, half if not more of the employees at SI are on your side. You did this well, okay? You did _nothing wrong_. I don’t have the clip, but I’m going to track down the person who recorded it – they probably have everything you said. I’ll show the board that you still made an argument for weapons, that you didn’t discount our military branch at all, and things will be fine. I’ll be out of touch for at least a week to smooth things over, present it to the board. And – and Rhodey’s pretty pissed, you know.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, feeling like a broken record. “Yeah, he, uh. He – his call was the. The first one I got.”

“Oh. Oh, Tony. He isn’t – he had a, a bad deal with his superiors. You know the pressure he’s under as both fae and dark fae,” Pepper said weakly. “I’m sorry – he’ll come around. You know.” There was a few more moments of silence before she murmured her goodbye and the phone clicked off.

Tony knew. He and Rhodey fought a lot, and as odd as it may seem Tony had gotten pissed at Rhodey for assuming things about satyrs and had frozen Rhodey out for almost two weeks. Their fights were few but loud, and long. Rhodey had had a few points along their friendship where he’d been so mad as to freeze Tony out.

He’d never yelled like that before.

“Lay low,” Tony muttered. The phone seemed to stare accusingly back, and he felt his eyes prickle.

“Right. Okay.” He inhaled deeply and pushed off of the stool. “DUM-E, you want to work on your little brother with me? Let’s see if we can get him an actual voice, maybe.”

***

Monday back was a study in exhaustion, mingled with moments of terror. No one in the lab would actually meet his eyes, even though they all seemed to support him. He’d already been dressed down – publically – by Obie, and Bruce had brought him his favorite salad, full of thick tomatoes and melted cheese, fresh avocado and spinach. He stayed late in the lab, refining the circuitry on the new tracking chips he was hoping to make more cost-efficient and more difficult to remove from their weapons shipments. The sky was dark when he left, and he tucked his jacket closer around his body, his fedora low over his eyes. This morning when he woke up, he’d been accosted eighteen times during his walk to SI. He’d taken an old trench coat to hide his body, and he’d made sure his hat – normally for covering his horns and ears – was tilted to cover his face, too.

“Oh, _now_ you’re here,” Tony grumbled, dragging his feet as he made his way down the street.

Beside him, the wolf padded, ghosting in and out of sight. Tony sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, and let his shoulders slump.

“Why are you even here? I’d think you’re pissed at me too, huh? You’ve been avoiding me, I’m sure.”

The wolf let out a soft whine.

“I’d deserve it. The board hates me. Hell, they’ll probably try to lock me out. Say I’m not contributing to the company, or some shit like that.”

The wolf whimpered a little.

Tony stopped walking and turned to look at the animal, who paused and looked back at him. “You are fae, I know you are,” Tony said pointedly. “You don’t like me as a person. You’re like everyone else in that stupid council.” He paused, and shook his head. “Including Steve and Janet. I don’t know why anyone – I don’t even think I should go to the meeting next Saturday. There’s no point.”

Stepping forward, the wolf licked at his hand.

“You can’t placate me with that, you know,” Tony said roughly. “I’m tired of people telling me it’s going to be okay, that things will work out. I’m even tired of them telling me that I’m making the wrong decision. I’m tired of _all_ of this.”

The wolf looked at him, and damn if those blue eyes didn’t look familiar. Tony stared down at the white wolf and shook his head.

“I’m just… I’m going to go home,” Tony sighed.

He turned around and left the wolf standing in the shadows of Central Park.

***

The week was… well, it was as near to hell as he could imagine, really. Somehow he managed to keep his head down and power through to the end of the week. Now that it was Saturday, he seriously considered just not going at all. It seemed like half the world wanted this exhibition to succeed, if the media was to believed

Today, Tony was going to the committee by himself. Rhodey wasn’t speaking to him – Tony could understand why, though it didn’t make things easier – and Pepper was trying to smooth things over with the board, who were _greatly_ disappointed in Tony’s ‘careless’ comments that had gotten out to the media. Who had leaked it, well. It didn’t matter, though Tony would bet it was Janet. Not that she had meant to get him in trouble, really, but… yeah. He’d put money on her. The ‘source’ had to be someone from the table at that time, since the boathouse had given them a semi-private table, and most people didn’t come to the place at exactly eight in the morning.

He didn’t have the binder or the visual aids today. He wasn’t even really prepared to do any debating over his chosen program or the food being served, or anything at all. He’d done the best he could before. He’d explained how he was going to make the exhibition as separate from the company as he could, explained how SI was giving him free reign here since he was in charge. He had done everything he could. What else _could_ he have done?

It was a silent walk, and he was finding himself more and more nervous as he approached the boathouse. Clint – well, he’d never win Clint over. Jane – he didn’t know if she was against him because he represented corporations and the big guy instead of the little guy, but she wasn’t really on his side. Natalia, well… no one knew where Natalia was going. She had seemed a bit more on his side last time. And Janet seemed extremely satisfied with the binder and the detailed plan that would protect her people’s lands.

And Steve.

Steve gave him a lot of conflicting feelings. He was attracted to him, deeply so – and it was rare that he met someone and was immediately attracted to them. Tony knew Steve was wary about the whole thing, but he seemed willing to give Tony a try. He was also, obviously, the leader, and everyone was going to defer to what he said. He had looked… Well, Steve had looked… not that disappointed with Tony last week.

Tony hoped. He was really running on fumes at this point.

He stepped into the boathouse, and paused. The entire group was there, talking quietly to themselves, and he glanced at his watch. It read 08:02am, so he wasn’t late…

His nervousness jumped up twenty notches, and he found himself slouching, the pants bunching uncomfortably around his legs and reminding him to straighten up onto his hooves again. With everything going on right now, he had to focus on what was right here. Clearing his throat, he walked up to the table and sat down, plastering his PR smile on his face. “Well, the gang’s all here. I hope that the past three meetings have soothed your minds about the exhibition?”

“Your presentation and your passion have been… very clear,” Jane said, and her voice was grudging, but favorable. Tony allowed himself to hope a little.

Steve leaned forward, forearms braced on the table. “We’ve taken your presentation under consideration, and we’ve considered everything you said. And we’ve figured that it would be… hypocritical to assume you can’t change, or that you can’t put together this exhibition.”

“So…” Tony said, looking around the table. “You don’t mind letting this happen?”

“Following the parameters given in that binder you had, this has good potential,” Natalia conceded. “You certainly seem to have thought about everything. The proposal is thorough. Your idea would help the world.”

Clint grunted, the only one who looked actively unhappy with the decision. “Thor and Jane pointed out this can be an important draw that will boost fae businesses and fae awareness. I understand the necessity. But I’ll be watching you closely, Stark.”

“I think by now you can call me Tony,” Tony offered, more in reflex than because he thought Clint would actually use it.

To his surprise, though, Clint let out a deep breath and gave a short nod. “Right. Tony. But we’re going to have to make this work together, and that means a lot of shit on your part, you got it?”

“Of course, of course,” Tony said, shocked. “I mean – everything’s good with you guys?”

“If this is the official answer of the fae-folk committee, I can sign off on the SI Robotics Exhibition,” Hill said, looking around the table.

“I have better things to be doing with my time, honestly,” Janet teased, poking Tony’s shoulder. “But at least this got resolved. I’m glad; it was a very good presentation.”

The other members began standing, and, still in mild disbelief and shock, Tony stood as well, shook the hands of Natalia and Janet, of Steve and Hill. Clint merely nodded his head at Tony, but Jane came up and clasped his hand tightly.

“Corporations suck the soul out of people,” she said, eyes boring into Tony’s. “You need to always remember that. No matter what happens. You are fae, and you can’t let them take from you that important part of who you are.”

Tony eyed her a long moment. “R-right,” he said slowly, drawing the word out. “Well, considering the whole project and everything is a part of who I am, I think I’m pretty okay.”

She didn’t drop that penetrating stare, and it was starting to creep him out, honestly. Awkwardly, he disengaged from her grip and turned to see Steve, shirtless like always, standing in front of him. Tony cleared his throat and put out his hand to Steve to shake. “Thanks, Steve. I’m glad – I’m glad everything worked out well, that you guys have put this trust in me. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

Steve chuckled a little. “I have an idea,” he said easily. “So, since this meeting didn’t include raised voices and accusations – for once – do you want to go… get breakfast somewhere else? I’m honestly a little sick of this place.”

Tony blinked. “Um – sure! I’d love to!” he said quickly, a grin spreading across his face. “I mean, I’m a bit overdressed, and you’re underdressed, but we can make it work.”

Steve looked at himself and blushed. Tony was _delighted_ to learn that the blush traveled down Steve’s neck and into his chest. “How about you head home, and I head home, and we meet up for lunch?” Steve tried.

“You have a phone?” Tony asked. “I can give you my number. I don’t mind walking places like this, but it will get a bit heated, I’d think. And as much as I’m sure that’s how your people dress, most places of business insist on a shirt-on policy.”

“No, you’re right, of course,” Steve grinned. “Here, take my phone, program your number into it. Let’s say – an hour to clean up? Or do you want to do actual lunch, at like noon or something?”

Tony’s fingers flew over the smartphone – well-aware of the problems in the system, and if the board ever _listened_ to him, Stark Industries could clean up with his innovative ideas for cellphones alone.

(Though that was the purpose of this whole thing, the whole exhibition – proving to the board that going in a non-military direction was a viable direction for the company.)

In response to Steve, Tony made a seesaw motion with his hand. “I’m not gonna lie; I was nervous as hell all last night and it’s been a stressful week at work – I haven’t had any sleep since yesterday. Lunch sounds amazing, and gives us a lot more options than breakfast.”

Steve smiled warmly, clapping a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Sure thing, Tony. I look forward to eating lunch with you.”

Tony had no idea how his life had gotten this perfect, but he’d be damned if he was going to question it.

***

“Hey, hey Tony!”

Tony paused, looking up, and he nearly didn’t recognize Clint and Steve and – no, he didn’t recognize the third guy with them. They were all very… _normal_ looking. And Tony was – well. He wasn’t put together the way he normally was when he came to meetings. He liked to look… yes, human was the word for it. He liked to know people weren’t going to try and rub his horns for good luck, or touch his ears, or try to feel how soft his fur was. He was wearing human pants, of course, because he disliked the looks he got when he wore true satyr clothing. But he had only a vest on, and he didn’t have a real hat on, only a small cap that didn’t completely cover his horns and left much of his ears exposed. Caught unprepared, he could feel his cheeks darkening as he blushed. “Hey… Clint. Steve. How – how are you guys?”

Steve smiled wide. He didn’t have his customary wolf-head ornament, and had a tight t-shirt straining over his impossible pectorals and tight jeans that molded over that luscious ass. Tony knew they were going to be meeting up for lunch, but he’d kinda thought it would just be the two of them, Steve and Tony alone. Not – Clint, a guy who hated his guts, and whoever the other guy was.

“Tony, this is my brother, Bucky,” Steve said easily. “Bucky, this… is Tony.”

Tony hesitated a moment, not quite sure what the pause was meant to signify, but the third guy – the long, black strands of hair falling into wary eyes, one arm missing – narrowed his eyes at Tony. “This?”

Licking his lips, Tony stepped forward and offered his hand for the other man to shake. “Tony Stark. And you are Bucky, Steve’s brother? You two certainly look different from one another.”

The man raised an eyebrow at Tony and hesitantly put out his right hand. Feeling like he was making some kind of social faux pas, Tony took his hand and shook it briefly before letting go.

“I’m James,” the man said, voice like gravel.

Involuntarily, Tony’s mouth quirked up into a smile. “I have a friend named James too, Steve. We’re more alike than you think.”

Clint let out a small huff of air, but Steve rubbed the back of his head and laughed. “Yeah, they wanted to come meet you, so… here we are!”

Tony looked between the three of them and then put on his biggest smile. “Alright, well, let’s go eat somewhere with style, hmm? I’m sure I can take you to some out of the way places that aren’t that common knowledge.”

Steve smiled widely, stepping forward to stand by Tony’s side, but Tony noticed the glance shared between James and Clint. He wasn’t sure what it meant – but he wasn’t going to worry about it. Steve had wanted to meet up with Tony, and so Tony was going to have fun with Steve and ignore the people following behind.

“There’s a wonderful restaurant I actually really like to visit. My company used it once or twice for some big business dinners, but they have a really nice menu. My treat, of course!” Tony offered, glancing over his shoulder at the other two. “I’m sure there’s something good on the menu for – for an elf and for, uh. A shapeshifter? Is that what you are?”

“No, we’re not shapechangers,” Steve said lightly. “Not lycanthropes. Though we can take on the form of our animal. We’re—”

“What if we don’t want to go to this – fancy restaurant place, or whatever?” James said.

Tony was – honestly, he was one hundred percent done with all types of confrontation. He just wanted something to go smoothly for a change. So he did his best not to grit his teeth and instead looked away from James to hold Steve’s gaze. “Well, I’m always open for suggestions, of course, and if you have somewhere you want to go, let me know. But if you’re relying on my recommendation, I’m going to take you to a good place that serves great food.”

There was silence for a heartbeat, and then Clint snorted. “Told you he’s a firecracker when you get him riled up,” he said, elbowing James.

Tony – didn’t want to start another fight, no matter how patronizing that was and how much he hated having people treat him like he was a cute package for them to stroke. So he bit his tongue and instead kept his eyes on Steve.

“Wherever you want to go is fine with us,” Steve said, smiling brightly.

The restaurant was an Italian place that did many vegetarian pastas, but it also served quite a few refined meat dishes that many people enjoyed. It was extremely pricey, but well worth it – their ingredients were fresh, their doors were open to the fae-folk, and the ambience was truly stunning.

In short, it was a great place to make connections as a company, because business dinners here always seemed that much more personal and intimate, and it was also a good date spot, because of the atmosphere. Not that this could be a real date, of course – not with Clint and James there to glower at him across the table.

Tony ignored them all. Steve was surprisingly easy to talk to; they chattered on for a few minutes before a waiter was around to order, and throughout the meal Tony really felt like they clicked together. For all that he was a satyr, with all the reputation that came with being a satyr, he really had no real experience flirting. He and Tiberius had just fallen together so easily at MIT, and then Whitney had actively sought him out. Rumiko had been… had been a mix of both, and Pepper had been a relationship built of mutual respect and curiosity. So Tony awkwardly attempted to flirt, to gauge Steve’s interest level, and he left the meal feeling strangely invigorated and hopeful.

That night, he went strolling through Central Park, keeping a sharp eye out for the wolf. He’d seen it escort him a few times since his last real talk with it on Monday, but he’d hurried through Central Park, not wanting to stop and give the wolf a piece of his mind – especially considering that the wolf had done nothing to deserve the indignant tirade. Now, though—

Now, he wants to share his triumph, his hopes and his excitement, with _someone_ , and it can’t be Pep because she’s still long-hauling it in front of the board to get them to overlook Tony’s words, and it can’t be Rhodey because Rhodey’s not speaking to him, and he could probably go to Bruce if he wanted but he’s more or less sure Bruce doesn’t care all that much. That leaves the wolf, which, sad to say, is the closest thing to a confidant Tony has right at the moment.

Within minutes, it seems, the white wolf is there, tongue lolling and head cocked inquisitively. Tony spread his arms wide, eager and excited, and squeaked out, “They said yes!”

The wolf let out a soft woof of air.

“They said _yes_ and honestly I really wasn’t expecting it, because let’s face it only Janet’s a fan on that committee, but they agreed to it and I honestly can’t wait, but you know what the absolute best part is?”

The wolf’s ears pricked up, and Tony grinned wickedly.

“ _Steve_ asked _me_ to go out for lunch! Granted, he brought Clint, that fucker, and another guy, James, around, and they both obviously aren’t very big fans, but we went out for lunch and gods above, wolf, I swear, I can’t believe it. I am definitely making another date with him later this week. I have his phone number and the amount of texts I will send this poor man—” He stopped and considered. “I really hope he has unlimited texting, actually.”

The wolf looked – well, _embarrassed_ , if a wolf could look embarrassed, head slightly curved down and tail hesitantly wagging, ears a little droopy.

“Oh, I can still come around and talk to you. Just because I finally found some action – and what amazing action too, have I told you about his _eyes_? – doesn’t mean I’ll forget you. But – I still can’t believe it, I’m still in shock, and I just, I wanted to share it with someone!”

With a doggy grin, the wolf sat down, tail gently beating the dirt, and its ears pointed high. Before he could really think about it, Tony threw himself forward and clutched the wolf in a tight hug.

“I know this sounds crazy, and hell, I suppose I deserve sounding crazy, but you – you really helped me, through this. If I were a believing man, I might think the gods sent you to me that night, and helped me get the courage to really take this step. But I’m going to take this to mean you’re my good-luck charm, okay?”

Obligingly, the wolf let out a soft bark.

Tony grinned and hugged even tighter.

 

**T-MINUS 4 MONTHS TO SHOWCASE**

***

“What the hell is this?!” Tony shouted, storming into Obie’s office and throwing the memo on the desk. “What in Tartarus possessed you? Possessed the board?!”

Obie raised an eyebrow at him. “Is this about pulling you from the project?”

“It’s my fucking project!” Tony snarled, ears pinned back against his skull, practically vibrating in fury. “I did all the work, I got the permissions, I put all the planning together! And now – _now_ —”

“You’re a loose cannon, Tony,” Obie sighed, waving a hand to dismiss the aide that was in his office. “Making those remarks to the committee? Taking the military liaison to the committee, when there wasn’t supposed to be any link to SI? Cavorting with that – that shapeshifter? If that’s how you had to get the vote, I applaud your initiative and drive, but SI really doesn’t need that type of PR. This was supposed to be good for the company, Tony, and so far, my boy, it looks like you’re trying to sabotage it.”

Tony stood there, unable to even breathe. How – how _could_ Obie do this to him? That was smoothed over, that was weeks ago, how could he _do_ this—

“On the plus side,” Obie said, looking down at the papers on his desk and making notations as if he wasn’t even _thinking_ about Tony anymore, “you’ve already got their go-ahead, and marketing and PR have already started getting in submission ideas, and your people have already surveyed the site and began base preparations. All we need now is Banner or Vanko to sell it to the public. We’ll have to recoup our core base somehow, so the board is leaning towards Vanko.”

“Obie, this is _my_ project! Vanko wouldn’t be able to explain shit about it, and you know it!” Tony said, leaning up on the desk. “You can’t do this, Obadiah, this is _my project_!”

At that, Obadiah looked up at Tony, and his eyes were cold, and also – smug? He looked _happy_ at Tony’s outrage. “Anthony, my boy, you know business. We’re all working for the same thing. Who cares if it’s you or someone else who presents what is, essentially, SI property and patents?”

Tony met that gaze, realizing that it might not even be the board that disliked him.

It was Obie.

“Are we done?” Obie – Oba _diah_ asked, not even looking at Tony anymore, his pen scratching across the papers.

Tony swallowed. “We’re done,” he said, voice hoarse, and he strode out of the office.

There was – there wasn’t anything he could do. He couldn’t fight for it, not without clear proof that Obi – Obadiah was sticking it to him on purpose. Even then, it would be hard to prove that was discrimination and not just dislike of Tony as a person. Tony was abrasive and rude, and everyone knew it; the media loved to play up his belligerent and aggressiveness, show how even a satyr could create weapons if riled enough. No one would really think the man who was Tony’s literal godfather would actively hate him.

And, hell, Tony couldn’t know that Obi – that _Obadiah_ , Oba _diah_ , hated him. All he knew was that he wasn’t allowed to peddle ideas that were separate from military applications.

The memo was very clear, though; to recoup the PR points SI had with the military, the presentation would include pointers on how to militarize the prosthetics and robotics, how to apply the technology towards war and defense. It was the exact opposite of what Tony had promised to the committee, and he didn’t know what he was going to say to them.

Then he remembered that there were no more formal meetings, and he had to smile sadly at that. He wouldn’t even be able to explain his side of it now – it was wholly out of his hands. His name stamped on it, his concessions that brought everyone to the table, and on his head would all the blame fall.

He was a sucker.

All he could think of doing right now was contacting Pepper. She wasn’t even in town right now – in fact, she was probably physically on a plane at the moment.

But he’d ping her the soonest she was available. She could work wonders with the board, not that Tony was really all that ready to do all the heavy lifting required of taking a more active and assertive role in his company. That being said, he’d let Obie block him from his own board long enough. It was time to clean house, and that was best handled on the down-low, between Pepper and himself. If Obie had been against him this whole time, there had to be proof somewhere, and he’d bet his left hoof it’d start back with the weapons that had been going missing for so long.

 

**T-MINUS 2 ½ MONTHS TO SHOWCASE**

***

It turned out that the first person to figure out Tony was off of the project – in the worst way possible, actually – was Natalia. It was also when Tony found out Natalia was a lamia, because he was wandering around NYC late at night, and Natalia had been half in scales.

“I haven’t seen you around Central Park for a while,” she said, walking over to him.

He rubbed nervously at his horns, taking a half-step back. “Umm…”

Her eyes narrowed, and she took a fluid step forward, tilting her head in a decidedly inhuman manner. “Did something come up in the project? I’ve already seen SI representatives there, and it’s already had a lot of ads, a lot of billboards, everything. But I don’t see you all that much. Steve mentioned you’re not at the developer and designer meetings, either?”

Caught flat-footed, Tony blinked at her and tried to smile. It was only about two months since their last meeting, and for all that he’d met up with Steve four or five times in those intervals – he would have loved for it to be more than that, and always texted Steve religiously each weekend to see if Steve was available, but Steve was apparently a really big deal with the fae and often had meetings and events that he was coordinating – Steve hadn’t asked him anything about the event. Steve had invited him to different events the fae-folk held throughout those two months, and even one or two meetings of the fae-folk representation committee, but Tony had declined. It had taken a long while, a thorough presentation, and three sessions where people did nothing but yell at him, for the few members of the committee to grudgingly accept Tony’s presence for an event that was as peaceful as he could create; he really didn’t want to sit through more of that with other fae. So he and Steve only saw one another rarely, and most of the time they were just eating food out with one or two Steve’s friends. As it stood, Tony had not once interacted with Steve alone, and it was really starting to bug him. He worried that he was imagining the attraction between the two of them, because so far Steve had managed to buffer every single outing with someone else. That was the only other time he saw the fae-folk from the meeting, though.

Well, that and the wolf, to which he both complained bitterly to about Steve ignoring him and vague remarks about how shitty work was as well as exulted to as he figured out how to give his AI, JARVIS, a functioning voice and learning module along with just how hot Steve was.

But other than the wolf, he hadn’t once seen another fae-folk try to interact with him. His unintended ‘statement to the media’ had finally died down, the board had gone back to ignoring Tony’s existence, and Tony was working hard with Pepper to figure out a way to force himself back onto the board without Obie’s backing. So he _really_ hadn’t expected to see Natalia just casually walking the streets.

“You _did_ say you were going to be overseeing the project personally. I get that you’re some bigshot,” she drawled, but her eyes were narrowed, judging his satyr apparel and unkempt beard, his riotous curls that were tangled and full of grease from his tinkering with DUM-E just a few hours ago. “But a promise is a promise.”

“No – I mean, yeah, yeah, I know. I just – I’m…” Tony trailed off, eyes flickering over to the other lamias who eyed him appreciatively. Like satyrs, lamias were known to have voracious sexual appetites, but Tony had steered clear of the species as best as he could.

Natalia considered him a long moment, and then let out a hissing snort. “You’re not a part of the project anymore, are you? That Russian is.”

Vanko. That fucker.

“You aren’t on it anymore, are you?” she said knowingly. “Your company trotted you out like a showhorse, a little bait for the fae. ‘Oh, look, we’re seriously considering your concerns, we even have a fae in charge’ – a fae who makes false promises and weapons and who’s as heartless as any human. Have you told Steve? I assume you’ve known for a while you weren’t going to be a part of the project, but I know Steve still talks to you, so I’m going to guess… no.”

“Natalia—” Tony began, not even sure what he was going to say, or how he was going to say it, but she flipped her red hair and strode back to the people she’d been walking with, dismissing him out of her thoughts and ending the conversation pretty decisively.

Still, he watched her walk away, sure that that could have gone better somehow, if only he could have figured it out. Deciding that he’d done enough wandering tonight, he turned back to his apartment and absently patted DUM-E’s strut. He hadn’t figured out how to make the equation work properly in his head, but he was too nervous to walk the streets trying to figure it out, not with his most recent encounter.

Natalia, however, must have cursed him, because the next morning, as he made his way towards SI’s headquarters, someone fell into step beside him. He looked up to see Clint there, hair styled back to show off his pointed ears.

“Steve’s been asking about you, man. You were supposed to be on site, you said? Unless something glitched with your technology, but it looked pretty solid when you showed it off. And man, I talked to a few of the workers that are walking around, getting things ready – they’re plans look pretty different than the ones you showed us in that last meeting a while ago.”

Tony cleared his throat. “About that – it looks like… like I’m not going to be on site, after all.”

Better to rip it off, like a band-aid, right? Taking in a deep breath, Tony continued, “And – and SI governing board had a – a different vision. Of what this would look like.” Pepper was in delicate negotiations with quite a few board members, who also didn’t like Obie and would probably support Obie if he intervened. Tony didn’t know how long it would take, or whether it would be over before the event went live, and it was better to give a broad heads-up than never letting the fae-folk know that he was currently removed from the project.

Clint paused, feet planted, and Tony felt obligated to also stop, to meet Clint’s piercing gaze.

“What do you mean, you’re not on site? There’s a different vision? This is your project, your idea, isn’t it?” Clint asked – demanded.

Tony cleared his throat, a bit more heavily this time, and shifted from hoof to hoof. “Well… it is. And it isn’t. It’s… technically, it’s SI’s technology, you know? They have – they have rights, to what I make, and they – they decided they weren’t going to let me…”

“You’re on the fucking board, aren’t you?” Clint asked, but it wasn’t really phrased as a question, and he folded his arms across his chest. “You pulled a fast one on us, didn’t you? After all your passionate speeches, your little publicity stunt and soundbite you created and fanned in the media—”

Honestly, that soundbite had been the most damaging thing to Tony, creating friction between him and Rhodey and him and the board; he couldn’t believe Clint would think that he would have deliberately said something like that for the media—

“—you step away and hand it back over to the corporate bastards who want nothing more than easier ways to kill people. That’s low, and even you need to see that.”

“Clint, it wasn’t a voluntary choice—” Tony began.

“S’your company, isn’t it?” Clint said cuttingly. “Your name on the side of it? Your board members? You have the fancy degrees, you’re the genius here, you’re telling me you just – what, let it go? Without a fight?”

Tony fought to keep his posture relaxed and calm, instead of allowing his shoulders to tense and his fists to ball up the way they wanted to. What did Clint expect, that he go head to head with the board? They were on Stane’s side, never on Tony’s. Maybe that was a self-sabotage on Tony’s part, maybe it would’ve been different had Tony taken an interest and been more than a chess piece all these years, but now all of the board listened to Stane, and Stane… Stane didn’t want Tony doing this. There wasn’t anything he could do.

“Look, Clint—”

“No, _you_ look, Anthony Stark,” Clint snarled. “One of my best friends went off to war and watched his partner blown up by Stark tech. One of my best friends came back from the war missing a limb – from Stark tech. One of my best friends had her ideas and her mentor’s ideas stolen from them by Howard fucking Stark. You may think you’re different from them, but you’re not. You’re just the same – money-grubbing humans looking to profit off of people’s misery. I can’t believe we ever bought into the fact that a _satyr_ that worked at _Stark Industries_ would be anything other than a hypocrite.”

With that, Clint turned on his heel and stormed away, shoving through the crowd of morning employees rushing to their jobs.

Tony watched him go, heart clenched tight in his chest. If Steve hadn’t heard about this from Natalia yet, he realized numbly, he was _definitely_ going to hear about it now. Clint and Steve were close friends, from what Tony could gather.

Maybe Steve would let him explain himself, explain the matter. Maybe Steve would at least show up angry and give Tony some leeway to talk.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

***

All of Tony’s texts either went unnoticed or ignored. He wasn’t sure which one he’d prefer at this moment – that Steve was so busy he couldn’t be bothered to read Tony’s increasingly desperate texts, or that Steve saw them and wanted nothing to do with Tony.

 

**T-MINUS 1 ½ MONTHS TO SHOWCASE**

***

Tony lingered in the middle of Central Park. It was practically two in the morning, and normally…

Well, he’d gotten used to seeing the wolf. He’d seen the wolf every time he walked this path for the past two months, and it had made him feel… more secure, more confident. And what with Natalia finding out he wasn’t coming, and then Clint confronting him about the changes to the plans that Tony had personally put together… and then going into work and hearing that fucker Vanko…

He wanted to see the wolf. He hadn’t seen or heard from, or even gotten a _text_ from, Steve, not once, not since Natalia and Clint had accused him of lying a week ago, not even after the media caught wind of it and began dragging Tony’s name through the coals. The wolf… that white wolf always made the day better, even if it was just to huff at him from the bushes. Sometimes it even let him pet it, or put his face against the ruff of fur, and it…

He missed the wolf. A lot.

But he hadn’t seen the wolf for a while. He guessed that the wolf, like the other fae, had found out about the problems with the expo, but he hadn’t thought the wolf knew he was Tony Stark, Merchant of Death. Then again, Tony’s face had been used to promote the entire event, so…

There was a soft growl from the bushes, and Tony paused. Was the wolf – here? He didn’t see any hint of white in the—

A huge black wolf stepped out from the bushes, white teeth and fangs bared, a white splash of color on its left shoulder. It was missing a leg, but that did not distract from its ferocity.

“Whoa, hey there,” Tony said, taking a step back. “We – I’m not – I’m just gonna go now, okay? I didn’t – I didn’t know this was your territory.”

The wolf took a menacing step forward, and Tony turned and ran for it.

 

**T-MINUS TWO WEEKS TO SHOWCASE**

***

When his cellphone buzzed, Tony grunted and didn’t move off his couch. He was bundled up in a thick blanket, staring blankly at the hanging plants, DUM-E whirring in the background.

His cellphone buzzed again.

On the third buzzing, Tony let out a frustrated grunt and leaned forward to grab the phone. The phone was blinking Bruce’s name.

Tony considered. The phone call was most likely a trap, but he _had_ disappeared without really explaining to Bruce why, so it might not be Pepper actually calling. And, hell, he didn’t have to keep talking if it was Pepper, right?

With a sigh, he picked up the call.

“Tony?”

“Hey, Bruce,” Tony mumbled.

There was a few beats of silence, and then Bruce cleared his throat. “It’s, ah. It’s Wednesday, and I was just curious – will you be coming into work this week?”

“I’ve taken an extended vacation,” Tony sighed.

There was another long moment of silence, and then Bruce asked tentatively, “For… how long?”

Pinching the brow of his nose kept him from leaking tears, and Tony inhaled slowly and as calmly as possible five times before responding as breezily as he could, “You know, I thought I’d start with two weeks and see how it goes from there.”

“Ah, geeze, Tony,” Bruce murmured. “I’m really sorry.”

“No worries. I – I knew this was a longshot. The board… wasn’t really into our ideas all that much. I just think I’ll wait it out until most of the media fuss over it dies down, you know? Once this weekend is over… well, at the very least, they’ll be bothering Vanko for this, right?”

“We miss you here, Tony,” Bruce murmured. “If – if you want to come back early, or just hang out, give me a call?”

“Sure thing, Bruce,” Tony mumbled dejectedly, and he listened to the phone click.

The media was calling Tony a hypocrite, a showman who had planted that soundbite – that soundbite that had ruined his standing with the board, and wasn’t that an ironic kick in the teeth? – so that people would be sympathetic and allow him to showcase weapons in Central Park. Where they got the idea that his tech was weapons…

Well, he couldn’t even say he didn’t know – he knew exactly. Vanko never met a single machine without trying to turn it into a grenade launcher, and the prosthetics Tony made had originally been intended for vets who had lost their limbs. It wouldn’t be that difficult for someone of Vanko’s knowledge to add on guns or explosives into the metal casing, creating a deadly arm that could withstand more, damage more, and harm more.

Tony sunk further down in his blanket and closed his eyes. He was working very hard to ignore his entire existence, really. Pepper was only getting more and more frustrated, trying to follow Tony’s instructions and not getting very far. He was sure that Obie was behind the problems in the company – though that could very well be because he was biased against Obie, now that he knew it was Obie who was blocking him from the board. He wanted Pepper to bring his hard drive from the lab to him, after copying the files from the company server. However, Pepper had to do it in a way that wouldn’t arouse the suspicion of anyone else in the lab or in the offices – _and_ she was still trying to juggle all the administrative duties the board was dumping on her because she’d successfully maneuvered them into forcing them to admit that Tony hadn’t messed up as badly as they wished to believe.

Beyond that, she was pissed as _anything_ that he was asking her to basically steal corporate secrets to satisfy his desire for revenge (her phrasing, not his), and so she took great relish in chewing him out every time she called on the phone.

DUM-E beeped quietly, and Tony wiggled in the blanket to reach out and pet the metal strut. “It’s okay, buddy. We’ll be okay.”

He’d manage this. He had handled going to MIT on his own, in an environment that was not conducive to safety for the fae, without support from his parents. He’d found Rhodey, and stuck by Rhodey even as Obie and Howard pressured him to distance himself from his new friend. He’d pushed to enter the R&D department when Howard had done his damnedest to keep Tony in the business side of the company. He’d developed several revolutionary aspects of technology that had launched SI miles ahead of where it was when he came in. He’d brought in Banner and Pym, he’d pulled in amazing researchers like little Peter Parker and Harley Keener. He’d watched the company go from just barely keeping its head over the water in the market to being consistently the top choice in military and security contracts.

He’d be able to recover, no matter what happened to him. Fuck the rest of the world.

 

**T-MINUS FIVE DAYS TO SHOWCASE**

***

“You need to kiss my feet.”

Tony felt like he had melded into the couch at this point; he’d had groceries delivered to his door, he’d binge-watched Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and X-Files for the past week and a half, and he’d eaten… a lot more potato chips and salted caramel candies than he probably should have. He’d taken one more phone call from Bruce – really, Bruce deserved the title of ‘best friend of the year’ because he managed to uplift Tony’s mood exponentially the Tuesday he called. Tony had actually gotten up and eaten something other than junk food – he’d had some stew leftover from a few weeks ago that hadn’t gone bad yet, he’d actually picked up the living room a bit, and changed some clothing. Bruce had nearly talked him into coming back into work, actually.

But beyond Bruce calling – and, okay, other people called, and he’d even picked up for two other people (Rhodey and Pepper) – no one had really tried to find him. So hearing Pepper’s voice in his doorway had him twisting around on the couch.

“Pepper?” he asked in surprise, standing up. He’d been dressed comfortably, which meant just his loincloth and nothing else, and he felt faintly embarrassed. Humans didn’t like to see that much skin uncovered.

She blew past that, though, closing the door and slicing him judging look. He flushed a little, ears drooping. “Really, Tony?”

“It’s been a tough time, Pepper,” he grumbled, starting to head towards the bedroom.

“Ah-ah-ah!” she said, cutting him off. “Where are you going?”

He paused. “I – was going to put on a, a housecoat or something—”

“No, why? Look – here. I got what you wanted.”

Immediately, his entire energy changed. “You got the files?”

“I got the files,” she said, smug and pleased, and he hopped over to her, practically dancing as she pulled out the hard drive. “Bruce helped, and Harley was amazing, but the one who really pulled this off was little Peter.”

“They’re all brilliant people,” Tony said impatiently, snatching the hard drive and making his way through the hanging green to the corner of the living room that had all his electronics. “Peter consistently surprised me in there; he’s very unassuming. What did Harley do?”

Pepper came up and stood behind him as he plugged it into his laptop and sat down on the stool. “He was smart enough to find the hidden files. Bruce and Peter – they were the computer whizzes who gave me the reason to be in the main server room and who made sure it wasn’t traceable at all, but it was Harley who got there and really found what you wanted found.”

Tony had kind of tuned her out, running through the files, and then he grinned, bright and sharp. “Right. This is exactly what I needed.”

“We have enough to stop Stane from blocking you from the board?” she asked, and he turned to her. She had invested so much in this, and she’d been with him every step of the way. She wanted this to go all the way, and they were going to finally see real results.

“Pepperpot, we have enough here to get him _arrested_ ,” he said with relish.

Her eyes widened, and she leaned forward. “What? Where?”

“He’s been deliberately mishandling shipments – see there?” he said, his smile fierce. “He really likes selling to the Middle East region. And there’s a few shipments to China, too, if you look. Hell, the money goes into kickbacks for him and for others on the actual board. Sweet gods above, look at that.”

“Tony – Tony this will remove him from the company,” she breathed. Turning to him, her eyes lit up. “You can take head of the board while he’s gone! You’ll get the company!”

“I can take back my event,” he agreed, his smile so big that it was actually hurting his face. “And I can think of no better place to do this than at the next board meeting.”

Her smile turned vicious, and she punched him in the arm. “You’re going to knock their socks off.”

“That _hurt_ , Pep!” he whined.

She made a scoffing noise and pushed away from his seat. “I’ll be with you, of course. I’ll tell Happy to have security waiting outside the board room. In fact, I think we’ll have some police downstairs waiting for them.”

“Let me contact Rhodey—” Tony began, and then he swallowed. “Well, actually, why don’t – why don’t _you_ contact Rhodey. I’m sure there’s other alphabet groups interested in this. They’ll need to coordinate—”

“Rhodey is… less pissed than you’d think. And he’s understanding, Tony,” Pepper interrupted. “This is the other reason I came. The Tony Stark _I_ know wouldn’t hole himself up for a pity party; he’d go on to prove everyone wrong. You _know_ you would.”

Tony had opened his mouth, and since shut it. Chastised, he looked down at his hoofs, and then reluctantly spread his arms. “I’m a disaster waiting to happen. I tried to prove I could be responsible and forward-thinking and cutting-edge, and I ended up with a board who hated what I was doing—”

“A board that we’re discovering is half in on mismanaging weapons for personal gain,” Pepper said pointedly.

“—and a committee that hated me as a person.”

“You changed their minds, though,” she added. “You listened to all of them with the most patient face I’ve ever seen you have, you never once insulted their intelligence or their ability to do basic human functions – both of which are things you would have done just coming out of MIT, don’t even think about trying to deny it, Tony – and you put together two really well-thought out presentations, one for the board and one for the committee. You put your money where your mouth was and you planned it down to a science. You have everything you need, Tony. You don’t need an ego boost from me to prove it.”

“Pepper—” Tony began.

She put a finger on his lips and met his eyes solemnly. “Anthony Edward Stark, you can do this. You have been doing it all along. These were a lot of setbacks close together, and I know it’ll be hard, but you can do it.”

Tony shrugged helplessly. “They all think I’m going to stop weapons production, but we have military contracts. I’m not going to stop building things that will protect people. I may change the focus, once the contracts are up, but no one’s going to be happy with me in control. And I’m a _satyr_. Pepper, tell me one time a satyr has successfully kept control of a company. The last one to do so ended up folding because no one trusts products created by satyrs.”

“You _frustrating_ man,” Pepper sighed, standing up and moving to the sink. “This is your chance to change it. Your tech has _already_ proven trustworthy. People don’t know it’s you – well, put your name loud and proud on it now. The tech that Vanko’s about to showcase at the exhibition? That’s all you. And you’re the only one who can sell it.”

Tony considered her words. He was big enough to admit that he probably had been having too big of a pity party. “Yeah,” he grunted, inhaling deep and then letting his breath out slowly. “Okay. Let’s get this done.”

Pepper wrinkled her nose at the contents of his fridge and shook her head. “We need to get you food, first, and you need to shower. Also, some of the plants look a little listless; you have been watering them, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, I have, that’s just Juni. She’s really sensitive and – you know what, don’t worry about it, I’m just gonna go shower.”

“Good idea.”

***

Agent Fury and Agent Coulson were surprisingly efficient and well-organized. They took the evidence Tony had found and within a few days had quietly arrested Obadiah Stane and two other members of the board. Tony had gone into work and stood in front of the board and told them in no uncertain terms that as heir to the company, majority shareholder, and head of R&D, that they were going to think about moving into new directions. He made Pepper CEO – a move that shocked her and the board, and he was sure the media would have a lot to say about that, but the whirlwind events were going by too quickly for any major media site to really pick up on it yet. He knew he had a cushion of a day, maybe two, before they’d realize that Obadiah Stane was arrested and Virginia Potts was Stark Industries’ new CEO, but he was going to make the most of that day.

 

**LIFTOFF**

***

“Hello, everyone! Hey, Ivan, that’s a sweet piece of tech you’re showing off, but I think I can take it from here,” Tony said charmingly, the suit he had uncomfortable against his fur but something necessary right now. He waved at the crowd at the exhibition – a good-sized crowd, considering the protesters on the edges of the event, kept there by the security team. He could see the white wolf, even, sitting underneath one of the larger trees.

He had come here and walked past people who saw him and shouted invectives, past people who saw him and wanted his autograph, and past many amazing and intriguing pieces of tech. He’d seen people gathered around the main stage, and he knew if he ever needed to get into the driver’s seat of his company, he would need to strike right then.

Up here, in front of people… he’d be lying if he said he’d had a lot of practice with it. Since his childhood, his father had hid him like a dirty secret, Obie – _Obadiah_ – had made it clear that being a satyr was not a benefit, and the students at MIT made it clear that people didn’t believe satyrs could do anything related to technology or computers. That didn’t change the fact that he naturally had an outgoing and social personality. He put on his biggest smile and spread his hands. “You guys having a fun time today?”

The cheer was more muted than he would have liked, but he could roll with it. Grinning at Vanko – who was looking murderous, but who also seemed uncertain or unwilling to kick Tony off the team – Tony ran his hand over the smooth metal finish. “I’m sure you’ve seen it a bit, just like you’ve seen all these other amazing technology, but this… I’m proud to say that this is my crowning achievement. This year,” he added on, and that got the laugh that he was aiming for. “Ivan, here, Ivan has made some modifications, right Ivan?”

“Of course,” Ivan began, eyes shooting daggers at Tony. “I put in some extra power in the tension cables—”

Tony cut in easily, bouncing off of that. “Ah, for the military, am I right? You can modify any prosthesis to have superhuman strength, to have weaponized attachments and built-ins. Correct?”

“Yes,” Ivan conceded, but when he tried to regain control of the conversation, Tony threw an arm around his shoulders and overrode him again.

“But this prosthesis comes from much humbler beginnings. C’mere, Roderick! C’mere boy!”

The stagehand on the side let go of Roderick’s leash, and the golden lab galloped onto the stage happily, panting and huffing up a storm.

“Roderick, here, Roderick is one of the inspirations for the prosthesis. This little puppy was born without his right paw, and that’s not a bad thing, you know? But it does make things a bit harder for him. He works harder than the rest of us, but with this prosthesis? He won’t have to.”

He lifted his hand, and Roderick reared back on his hind legs, pawing at Tony’s front, and Tony placed a dog biscuit in Roderick’s mouth. As the dog crunched away, Tony rubbed Roderick’s head and looked back out over the audience.

“These prostheses Stark Industries designed are going to be released on the medical market. They’ll be covered by most medical plans, and most major hospitals and doctors have already looked over the technology and have signed off on it. This will be hitting the market two months from now, and each prosthesis will be customizable to a degree with StarkTech. But you don’t need to know about buying them – you want to know what makes them interesting, don’t you?”

There was a ragged cheer from the crowd, and Tony grinned.

“Now, Ivan here – you’ve got to forgive him, my friends. I always say, Ivan’s the guy you go to when you want things to go _boom_ , and who doesn’t like some explosions here and there?”

Laughter circled through the crowd, and with Roderick happily munching on the ground, and Ivan growing more and more frustrated to the side, Tony stepped up close to the prosthesis.

“But this prosthesis – oh, it’s much more than a tool. It can be a part of you, if you’ll let it. It’s made of a proprietary mix of metals and plastic polymers to make it light, and less likely to drag on your body. It’s hard to see, but if you look real close here, at the junction, it’s got a sophisticated port. This port allows it to connect with the nerves left in the limb, so it can react just as if it was a real limb. It reacts to heat and pressure, and one of the customizable options automatically built in is a camouflage option; it’ll blend with your skin. It’s pretty affordable, relatively speaking – you’re getting top of the line quality here, so most models start at around twenty-five k, but they’re also designed to be long-lasting. Knowing that the current technology only lasts about three years on average – I mean, come on, three years? – StarkTech is committed to having a well-made, long-lasting product that, stress models suggest, will last _on average_ ten to twelve years. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’m always looking to improve, and we have some models still undergoing rigorous testing that suggest they’ll easily last an additional ten years or more.”

It was pin drop silence, now, broken only by the faint noise of the protestors and the soft sounds of nature around them. Tony smiled gently and looked back at Ivan before squaring his shoulders.

“Everyone, I think it’s safe to say that StarkTech is normally synonymous with weapons. Hell, my father practically invented the missile. But StarkTech has _always_ been about more. Our technology and computer hardware has been in NASA missions, in security systems, in the chips you use for your pets around the world. Now, our focus is moving away from just weapons. We’ll be looking to scale back our weapons production, and focus more on things that really help our troops and our citizens here at home – better airplane and helicopter technology, better night vision goggles, better bulletproof vests, and, yes, better guns and explosives for my dear friend Ivan here. But we’re also committed to helping our military here at home. From now until the new year, veterans can ask for, and _get_ , a StarkTech prosthesis entirely free of charge, donated by Stark Industries as a thank you for the lives that they put on the line to protect us and to help them reintegrate with society.”

There was a commotion in the back, and Tony’s eyes cut away to see Obadiah, looking furious – how did he get out of prison? He had been arrested yesterday; had they really let him out on bail already? – striding forward. Tony had been hoping that his announcement would overshadow the very real backlash his company would face after the media found out three high-up members, and multiple lower-level employees, were abruptly let go overnight, but it looked like Obadiah was set on making his drama the new story. He fought back a wince as Obadiah passed the tree under which the wolf had watched the entire proceedings and made his way to the edge of the crowd.

Suddenly the wolf leapt forward, and as he did, the body twisted and changed, sliding from a four-footed animal form to a humanoid form, white fur covering the limbs and – well – thankfully there was a thick enough ruff _down there_ to hide the otherwise embarrassing bits.

All the dots suddenly connected in his mind, and Tony knew, viscerally, that this was Steve.

Obadiah paused, looking at the white human-looking wolf, and then tried to press his luck, but the wolf was having none of it.

Deciding that Obadiah would either approach the stage or not, Tony shoved it out of his mind and turned back to the crowd. “Any questions?” he asked, smiling charmingly.

Photos flashed and reporters at the front of the crowd – thankfully far enough away from whatever drama Obadiah was currently creating – began yelling questions at Tony.

He smiled and pointed into the crowd. “Alright, you, red shirt. What’s your question?”

***

Once the presentation ended, Tony took Roderick backstage to where Harley was waiting, impatiently swinging his feet as he sat on the edge of a table, popping gum nonchalantly. “Hey, short stack, here’s your dog back.”

“Did it work out well?” Harley asked, seemingly disinterested.

“You know it did, when does anything I do _not_ turn out well?”

Harley let out a bark of laughter and Tony’s mouth twisted ruefully. “Alright, scat, you little heathen, take Roderick back home and really feed him.”

“Whatever you say, bossman,” Harley drawled, jumping off the table and taking Roddy’s leash from Tony’s hand.

Tony watched them go, smiling, before turning around and nearly walking face-first into Steve’s chest.

He swallowed hard. Steve looked – as he always did. Perfect, untouchable. Shirtless. He was barefoot, too, but he had pulled on sweats from somewhere, so his modesty was saved in his human form better than it had been saved in his wolf-humanoid form. It took more effort than Tony preferred to remind himself that Steve had ignored him since finding out that Tony was no longer on the project, and hadn’t tried to contact him once. Clearing his throat, he forced himself to meet Steve’s eyes.

Steve, at least, looked at least as uncomfortable as Tony did. “Can we – can we talk?”

That really deserved a double swallow, but Tony suddenly found himself extremely dry-mouthed. “How – how about we talk back at my place,” Tony said roughly. “Less witnesses that way. Unless you really can’t leave Central Park – no, you can leave, you went on all those lunches with me. It was just as a wolf you couldn’t leave.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Steve mumbled, “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how. You and I… didn’t exactly get along.”

“Oh, god, I complained about you to _you_ ,” Tony moaned, dropping his face in his hands and fighting to remain calm.

Pink colored Steve’s cheeks. “I – thought that was very sweet. I liked it. And I liked you.”

Tony let out a huff of air and stalked away from the exhibition. Ideally, he should probably stay, schmooze and do whatever else it would take to smooth over whatever damage Obadiah did, show that he stood by these projects and his own, scope out some of the pretty sweet talent, charm reporters so they’d have something to talk about other than Obadiah’s arrest tomorrow morning… but this talk with Steve was long overdue, so instead he exited Central Park and made his silent way to his apartment.

Behind him, Steve trailed like a lost puppy. At first, he tried making conversation, but when all he got was one-word sentences, he stopped and instead managed to look like a kicked kitten that didn’t understand why things weren’t working out. That look only frustrated Tony more – Steve hadn’t called _once_ in the two weeks Tony had closed himself into his apartment, hadn’t ever even initiated a conversation via text or voicemail even before Obie – before Obadiah had locked Tony out of the event. He always brought his friends onto any type of outing Tony planned, and he’d be insulted if Tony implied that they should perhaps leave.

Maybe he had been trying to tell Tony all along that he really wasn’t interested in this going any further and Tony had just been that blind to the hints.

“Wow, Tony, this is a really nice place,” Steve murmured as they walked in the front of Tony’s building.

Tony merely hummed under his breath, stepping into the elevator.

With a sigh, Steve stepped into the elevator as well and shook his head. “I don’t know why you’re so mad, Tony—”

“Why I’m so mad?” Tony asked, no, demanded. Exiting the elevator, he whirled on Steve and shoved a finger in those perfect abs. “Maybe, perhaps, it’s because it really sucks if you need help and the people around don’t know and you feel like hell for needing their attention. Maybe it’s because you apparently _are_ a shapechanger, and you told me you weren’t. Hell, maybe it’s because you let me make a complete _fool_ out of myself in front of you, more than once.”

Steve quickly stepped forward, gently clasping Tony’s hand. “No, no Tony, I’ll make – I’ll explain my side, okay? It’s not – I didn’t lie, technically, and I didn’t know there was a time you needed help.”

“You _could have fucking texted_ ,” Tony hissed, struggling to get the keys into the lock. Finally, the door clicked open and Tony strode inside, heading straight for the liquor cabinet

“Tony – please, let me explain,” Steve said, stepping inside.

Pouring himself a generous glass, Tony sardonically lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not stopping you. Go ahead, tell me how you’re going to explain this to me.”

Steve bit his lip, cast his gaze around the apartment, and then squared his shoulders as he gathered up his courage. “Not contacting you was – was wrong, but you have to believe me that all those times I said I couldn’t meet up, I really couldn’t. I’m not a shapechanger; I’m a vaettir.”

It was a term Tony had never heard before, and for a few minutes his curiosity warred with his anger before his thirst for knowledge won out. “A vaettir?”

“Yeah – they’re protection spirits. They take the shape of animals, normally, but they’re not like lycanthropes; they don’t have packs, they don’t have any special connection to the moon, and they have some magic to them, like witches or druids. Nature magic,” Steve explained, face earnest. “I’m – well, I’m the strongest vaettir, and my territory is Central Park. I take care of the paths, of the people who enter there – human or fae – and I, well. I’m drawn to people in distress.”

Tony’s anger slammed back into him, full-force. “Was that all I was?” he snapped. “Someone in distress to listen to? To jerk around?”

“No – no, Tony!” Steve said, stepping forward and tentatively placing his hands on Tony’s shoulders, hands cupped and thumbs rubbing circles over Tony’s suit jacket. “Never, Tony. I – I really like you. A lot. I wanted to have a real relationship with you, but I was trying to find a time to… to tell you, that I was the wolf you were talking to. It never seemed like the right time.” Steve hesitated briefly, and then leaned forward and brushed a kiss against Tony’s cheekbone, underneath Tony’s right eye. “And then, then you weren’t around and I felt – betrayed, really. I didn’t realize what was happening, not until Ms. Potts explained things.”

Ms. Potts? _Pepper_? Oh, Tony was going to have words with her—

Steve seemed emboldened by the kiss, because he leaned in again, this time pressing a light butterfly kiss to the tip of Tony’s nose, and Tony could feel a blush starting to dust over his skin. He licked his lips and forced his thoughts into some kind of order.

“I don’t – I always texted first. You never texted me,” he said, and it sounded weak, a child’s whine.

But Steve pressed another kiss to the corner of Tony’s mouth before murmuring, “You were – are – a busy man, Mr. Stark. I didn’t know what your schedule was like, and I really – I wanted to let you choose how it played out. I didn’t want to pressure you, make you think… make you think that you had to sleep with me to stay on the committee’s good side.” His first kiss on Tony’s actual lips was chaste, but that soon changed, Steve sliding his tongue into Tony’s mouth, plundering and pillaging. Well, that made it sound like he was taking; really, Tony was gripping Steve’s forearms as if terrified Steve was still going to walk away, and he was sucking Steve’s tongue into his mouth, doing everything he could to keep Steve right there, still kissing.

“I didn’t think – it didn’t seem like – I didn’t know you were really interested. In me,” Tony managed to gasp out between Steve’s kisses.

Steve pulled back, a confused frown on his face. “How? I invited you out for a drink the _minute_ our business was concluded!”

“Yeah, and _brought along other people_ ,” Tony pointed out, fingers twining in Steve’s hair to bring their mouths together again. “Brought along other people _every single time_.”

Steve valiantly resisted. “You can’t honestly think that I didn’t care about you,” he said, sounding, of all things, hurt.

“Steve,” Tony said impatiently, “you didn’t speak up once for me during any of the meetings. In fact, on at least two occasions I can think of, you were dismissive of me. The few times we met up after the meetings were done, you brought someone with you. You never once called or texted me once you found out that idiot Vanko had been placed in charge. Even as – gods above I can’t believe I spilled my guts to you – but even as a _wolf_ there wasn’t a lot of support for the idea that ‘Steve likes Tony.’ Forgive me if the evidence looked overwhelming.”

Letting out a little whine, Steve pressed his mouth at the junction of Tony’s shoulder and neck, panting hot against Tony’s skin. Since that was erotic in and of itself, let alone the position pressed Steve’s front squarely up against Tony’s front, Tony didn’t fight it and instead spread his legs even wider, letting Steve’s hips rest in the cradle of Tony’s thighs.

Okay, the words he was going to have with Pepper weren’t going to be that angry, but they’d be pretty indignant—

“I didn’t mean for you to think that. I just – needed to get my head on straight. I wanted—” Steve broke off, flushed deep red. “I wanted like… moral support, I guess. And I wanted you to meet my friends. I have – there are a lot of them, I’m realizing. Now that I. Now that I think over it.”

There was a lot Tony could say to that, but Steve was _right there_ and saying pretty much all the right things, and he didn’t want to be talking anymore. “Right, well, good, but right now, Steve, I’m more than a little hot and bothered, so if you want to do anything, now would be a great time. Otherwise, give me some space to take care of it myself.”

Steve pulled back, his brows furrowed in determination. “I’ll do it,” he said, and if there was something to be said about Steve, it was when he committed, he _committed_. Tony could barely catch his breath before Steve had crowded him up against the side of the fridge and was undoing the suit’s pants to reveal Tony’s thick erection.

“It’s – very big,” Steve said slowly.

Tony flushed, and ducked his head. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Satyr. We, uh. We’re not human proportions – you know, you could just, I dunno, let me suck you off and that would be good—”

“It would be a crime to not taste,” Steve breathed, darting up to Tony’s mouth to press a quick kiss before he was sliding down, to his knees, encouraging Tony to brace hands on Steve’s shoulders. His mouth hovered over Tony’s dick, and the moist, hot air made Tony’s hips buck and his breath catch in his throat.

“Steve—” Tony began, which was when Steve dropped his head and sucked the crown into his mouth.

With a yelp, Tony flailed his arms, looking for something to dig his fingers into and hold on to, and finding nothing except Steve’s hair. He reached up briefly, fingers fluttering against Steve’s hair, and then he dropped his hands again, uncertain. “Steve, _oh gods_ , Steve _please_ ,” he begged and Steve began to suck, those large hands circling Tony’s cock and stroking the part that Steve very obviously couldn’t reach.

It had been too long, and Steve’s inexperience and Tony’s eagerness meant that Tony didn’t last half as long as he wished he could. When he could finally see again, Steve was squirming a little on the ground between Tony’s legs.

With a lazy smile, Tony threaded a hand in Steve’s hair and tugged lightly. “If you’re amenable,” he purred, loving the feel of Steve’s bare chest and arms brushing between Tony’s thighs, “we could move this to a bed.”

“You’re – you finished. Already,” Steve said awkwardly.

Tony laughed lightly, delighted at the fact that he would have Steve for a long time yet. “Well, that’s true enough, but I’ve got two holes, Steve, and one needs lube if you want to get anywhere near it, which is going to require relocation.”

Steve’s eyes went comically round, and then his smile became wolfish, almost predatory. “I think I’m very interested in that,” he said, clambering to his feet enthusiastically.

Tony was very pleased that he was only a _little_ wobbly on his hooves as he stepped out of the suit pants and picked them up off the floor, flicking the small fluff of a tail at Steve. “Oh good,” he teased. “Otherwise, I’d just have to find a nice dildo to give me a deep dicking.”

Steve let out a strangled noise and followed Tony into the bedroom.

***

“What’s that godsawful ringing noise,” Tony grunted, rolling in the bed and only succeeding in plastering himself on top of Steve’s chest. While it was a lovely position – Steve’s chest was amazingly warm and the thud of Steve’s heart was wonderfully calming – it wasn’t solving the problem of the ringing noise.

“Think it’s m’phone,” Steve muttered into Tony’s hair. “Jus’ ‘gnore it.”

Tony grunted, and burrowed his head against Steve’s chest – his ears were very sensitive, and the ringing was _very_ shrill. Just as he was about to say fuck it and get up to turn it off, the phone fell silent.

Now, however, he was wide awake.

“Gods take it,” he growled, flopping aside and staring up at the trailing vine that curled over his mattress. A glance to the side showed that it was ten o’clock at night, and Tony was not sure how he felt about the weird sleeping schedule he’d somehow managed to find himself in, but he couldn’t really complain.

Steve mumbled something and rolled to stretch an arm out across Tony’s chest, ending up face-down in the middle of the bed, snuggled against Tony’s side.

Tony lay there, thinking about the four – _four_ – times he’d come over the course of the afternoon, and never had he been more grateful to be a satyr as when he found out vaettirs apparently had as good metabolism as shifters, and their refractory period was as quick to recover. Steve would probably be hungry when he woke up, Tony realized, and he wriggled free of Steve’s arm and sat up on the mattress, dragging his hooves onto the floor. His phone was… not by his bed. Ah. They’d started their… _bedroom_ activities in the kitchen, and at the time Tony’s phone had been in his suit pocket.

With a quiet groan, Tony pushed up off the floor and tottered over on aching legs to the crumpled pile of clothing. Sure enough, there was his phone – with six calls from Pepper and two from Rhodey and three from Bruce sitting in the notifications. Tony let out a soft sigh and snagged a loincloth to wrap around his waist before staggering to the kitchen to see if there was anything he could make from what was in his fridge.

Within minutes, he realized making anything from his fridge was impossible, so he let out an annoyed grumble as he pulled up his phone and called the nearest Mediterranean place that delivered. Then he laboriously called back Bruce – who had called to congratulate him on the excellent showing, apparently the media loved him, and then called him back an hour later asking what the hell had happened with Obadiah, since that’s apparently when the media got wind of the arrest. Bruce, at least, was easy to talk to and didn’t demand too many details.

Then he called back Pepper.

She chewed him out for a full five minutes for not sticking around and working the crowd the way he should have, and then asked whether Steve had got his act together.

“Pepper,” Tony said warningly. “Did you force Steve to come and patch things up with me?”

“No,” she replied, voice overly sweet. “I told him to properly break it off and tell you to lose his number, since he obviously wanted nothing to do with you. Why, is that not what happened?”

“You know, you move all of us around like chess pieces,” Tony sighed, but his voice was fond, and she laughed warmly on the other side.

“You put me as CEO for a reason, Tony. Are you happy?”

“ _Very_ happy.”

She hummed. “I may just ask for details the next time we eat a carton of ice cream on your couch, but for now I feel obligated to remind you that you have damage control to do all tomorrow. You’ll need to be in the office bright and early and ready to kick down some doors.”

“Of course, Pep. You’re the best,” he murmured.

“I know,” she chuckled, and as she hung up, Steve appeared in his doorway. Gloriously nude.

Tony’s brain stuttered to a halt, and he licked his lips as he looked Steve over.

Steve caught his attention and grinned, preened a little, which made Tony laugh. “C’mere, you,” Tony said, and Steve obliged, ambling over and wrapping those thick arms around Tony’s shoulders, kissing the corner of Tony’s eye.

“Anything to eat?” Steve asked, rubbing his cheek on top of Tony’s head.

Tony sighed. “I called for delivery; give it thirty minutes. Hope you like Mediterranean.”

“Food is food,” Steve said, shrugging, and then he grinned wickedly. “There’s a lot of things we could do in thirty minutes.”

Tony found himself smiling helplessly along with Steve, and as Steve made his way over to the couch – presumably for a soft surface on which to do said things – Tony watched his ass, the bunch of his shoulders, the messy blond hair.

“Was it – is this pity?” Tony blurted out.

Steve turned around, confused. “Is what pity?”

“This – all of this. It’s all – I don’t know how to trust sudden things. They never work out. This had – this was a lightning bolt, out of the blue. I don’t get where you’re coming from, why you’re here. And you heard everything I said to the wolf.”

Steve tilted his head, a decidedly very canine-like gesture, and he patted the couch. Slowly, Tony walked over and reluctantly sat down next to Steve.

“I think it’s my turn to try and get you to trust me, and my intentions,” Steve murmured, lacing his fingers with Tony’s. “I – I mean, I could bring any of my friends here and they’d tell you – I walked out of that first meeting and I never stopped talking about you.”

“I thought you hated me,” Tony whispered.

Shaking his head, hard, Steve twisted so that he could fully face Tony. “I – I know I was a hard sell, harsh, in the meetings. I had to be. There were – are – a lot of fae who didn’t want your brand near Central Park, and they elected me as a representative to the committee because they trusted I’d be honestly looking out for their interests, looking to see if Stark Industries was just looking for a way to capitalize again, or if the intention was sound.” Steve paused, and then he said guiltily, “I feel that some of Clint’s behavior is because he worried I’d be too soft, that I liked you too much to do what I’d been appointed to do. So I’m sorry about that.”

“Clint’s an asshole, I’ve come to terms with that,” Tony said dismissively.

Steve choked on a laugh, and shook his head. “But I – each time you approached the wolf, you approached me, you were so excited, or so bummed out. You really thought you had a confidant, and I liked listening to your voice, your words. Sometimes – yes, sometimes it was awkward, but you shared moments with me like that that… that I treasured. You told me about Harley pushing back at the intern – Johns, I think – that always took credit for Harley’s initiative, you told me about Peter losing his nervousness and becoming a great presenter. You told me about Bruce keeping track of how many days he could go without losing his temper and going on a berserker rage, and you teased him. I felt… I felt a part of your family, of your home, and I loved that, dearly. I’ve always wanted more with you and yesterday – yesterday when you got up on that stage, when you owned it, when you handled everything the reporters threw at you and you acknowledged the protestors and you thanked Janet personally – I knew I couldn’t let you go any longer. I needed to speak with you, even if it was just for you to yell at me and kick me out of your life.”

Tony looked down at their entwined fingers and breathed in deep. “So you want a relationship.”

“I want a relationship,” Steve confirmed, nodding his head so hard Tony was afraid it would fall off.

“You realize with Obadiah gone, I’m going to have a lot more responsibility. I’m not going to be able to be around a lot,” Tony said warningly.

Steve blinked. “Obadiah? Gone?”

Tony opened his mouth and then closed it and shook his head. “No, you know what, that’s a story for another day.”

For a long moment, Steve eyed him, and then he said tentatively, “So this means – yes? To a relationship? A long-term relationship?”

And that – that was so far out of what Tony had seen as the ending of this day that for a few heartbeats he sat in shock, trying to put into words just how good that question made him feel. When Steve’s face began to fall, however, he jumped in hastily, saying, “Yes, yes, of course! That’s what I want, yes, please. A relationship with you.”

Steve smiled warmly and leaned forward, kissing Tony breathless. Then he pulled back, lips red and swollen, his fair skin dusted pink, and his blue eyes dancing wickedly. “I brought lube out of the bedroom, by the way. I want your dick in me _yesterday_.”

They were a little late answering the door for their food, and after they ate Steve returned the favor, and Harley and Peter may have been both gleeful and grossed out at Tony’s slight limp the next day, but Tony couldn’t care less.

He was on top of the world.


End file.
